it was not in our cards to be forgettable
by squeakyswings
Summary: Fourteen unconnected one-shots - Dennis/Gabrielle, Dominique/Teddy, Dominique/Scorpius, Lily/Lorcan, Lysander/Dominique, Pansy/Louis, Frank/Alice, Lily/Teddy, Astoria/Draco, Roxanne, Lily/James, & Lily/Scorpius - "If I could have anything, anything at all, I would not have eternity. I would have you. I would have now."
1. dennis and gabrielle

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Harry Potter._**  
>AN:** This is going to be a series of unrelated one-shots, mostly to stop myself from starting another multi-chaptered fic_. _If you want to see a particular pairing, gen fic, or character study, send me a PM, a message on Tumblr, or leave your request in a review. (I'm dying for inspiration these days; if you want to include prompts or songs, feel free to!)  
>This one is for Tat (Tat1312), who requested DennisGabrielle, and she also suggested the (utterly brilliant) photography idea. I hope you like it, love!

* * *

><p><span>we won't ever come home<span>

Gabrielle likes Paris best in the soggy month of February. Not for any aesthetic reason—February is quite possibly the ugliest month of the year, save perhaps November—but because the post-Christmas tourists have dropped to a trickle and the pre-summer tourists have not yet packed their bags. Of course, tourists still swarm the sights; she usually avoids the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame and the Louvre no matter the month.

Unfortunately, Martine—her co-worker and occasional best friend—owls her on the last Tuesday in February with an inappropriately vague message: _There's something going on at the Eiffel Tower this morning. Check it out on the way to work, will you? The boss might want an article on it._

Had Martine sent her the message the night before, Gab would have Flooed to her friend's flat and begged for further explanation, or maybe snatched Martine's wand and forced _her_ to the Eiffel Tower in the morning. As it was, the owl floats through the open door to Gabrielle's balcony at nine in the morning, so she is already late for her job at _Le Monde magique_, and if the "something" at the Eiffel Tower offers her an excuse, then she supposes she ought to accept it. Even if it requires mingling with the tourists.

She loops a violet scarf around her neck and shrugs into her grey wool coat, buttoning it as she hurries down the stairs and out through the door to her building. Gab ducks her head as she rounds the corner at the far end of the street, feeling strangers' eyes snag onto the blonde braid hanging down her back, taking in the small hand holding her bag, searching for the shape of her figure beneath her coat. When she's around her friends, the other reporters at the newspaper, Gabrielle barely remembers her Veela blood, aside from when one of the blokes begins flirting with her, but when she's out on the streets, on her own among strangers, it once again becomes almost all she is.

She turns onto the Champ de Mars and crosses the street without checking for cars; the tourists begin here, the clumps of Americans in track shoes and the Brits in their wool hats, all with cameras out, snapping photograph after photograph of the Eiffel Tower silhouetted against the grey sky, blurred by the raindrops.

A flash bursts to Gabrielle's right and she flinches away from the middle-aged woman holding the camera, jerking left into another confused group of tourists—Romanian, all speaking over each other as they reach into their purses and rucksacks for more cameras.

Gabrielle jumps away from them, apologising as she begins running toward the Tower. The sooner she sorts out whatever the "something" is, the sooner she can escape these crowds and their flashes and their absurd obsession with freezing moments, catching time, building images from light.

The crowds increase as she reaches the high arching base of the Tower, and she ducks out of another photographer's way as his camera swings in her direction. She doesn't notice anything out of the ordinary, though: there are camera-carrying tourists; several men standing by blankets, trying to sell miniature Eiffel Towers and light-up dogs and creepy dolls; there are police and a few food carts. It is the Eiffel Tower as it usually is on an early morning in February—not as crowded as it will be in June, but still overwhelming to Gabrielle.

She turns on her heel and glances around one last time, about to give up the whole thing as some elaborate ruse of Martine's to keep her out of the office until at least eleven, when a man bumps hard enough against her shoulder to send her tumbling to the ground, her bag spilling quills and notebooks and _shit_, her wand, as she lands on her knees, her hands meeting the concrete.

Jeans kneel down into her line of vision as she scrambles to snatch her wand from where it's rolled, about two feet away, and whoever it is reaches the wand first. He picks it up from the ground, balances it in his hand, and mutters, "Rowan, thirteen inches, _Veela_ hair?" in English.

She grabs the wand from his hand, her fingernails scratching against his palm in her hurry, and he winces, glancing at her from beneath a close-fitting black wool cap. He has gold-flecked brown eyes and dark eyebrows and a questioning smile that sets Gabrielle's nerves on edge. She reaches for her notebooks and quills without responding, and gets to her feet, zipping her bag as she starts to walk away from him, taking a right to get to the Dupleix metro stop.

"Hey," he calls. Then he tries in French, "_Excusez-moi_?" and his accent is so miserable that Gabrielle could easily have ignored him, but he had read her wand without even casting a spell, and so she whirls to look up at him. He's got nearly thirty centimetres on her, and she crosses her arms over her stomach, feeling uncomfortably short and out of place.

"What?" she asks in English, not anxious to hear any more mutilations of her language from his mouth.

"I'm sorry, it's just—you're a witch, right?" He lowers his voice, and Gabrielle rolls her eyes.

"Obviously." She taps her right foot against the pavement, but he either doesn't notice or doesn't care that she wants to be elsewhere.

"Awesome! I am too. I mean, I'm a wizard."

"Obviously," she repeats.

He continues undaunted, "Hey, are you okay? That bloke knocked you really hard. Do you need any sort of healing or anything?"

"No. I am fine," she tells him, even though her palms are stinging and her knees must be violet with bruises already.

"Well," he hesitates. "Okay. I just wanted to make sure you were all right."

She nods. As the silence extends long past the awkward point, she gives in and says, "Thank you."

"You're more than welcome." This stranger grins at her, and she manages the barest smile back.

"I have to get going," Gab nods her head back toward the street that leads to her metro station.

"Sure." The man shrugs, and Gab turns again, ready to leave him and this disaster of a morning behind her.

But a few minutes later, as she's taking a right at the end of Avenue de Suffren, she feels someone coming up behind her. "I'm sorry," that British voice says from above her left ear, "but do you mind if I take up just a little more of your time?"

She turns and fixes him with the grey-eyed stare that has sent tens—if not hundreds—of men running to the comfort of their mothers. But this odd wizard, with his ordinary brown eyes and his large hands and his tallness, does not even flinch.

"It's just," he begins, as if she's told him he's welcome to babble her ear off if he'd like to, "it's just that I don't know anyone here. I came because of that, I think, but it's hard to start over again."

Gabrielle blinks. He is telling her too much and she wishes he would stop. Transparency terrifies her.

"Anyway," he chuckles, finally nervous. "I guess I was just wondering if you'd get dinner with me tonight? It's been lonely, eating by myself for months."

She breaks her silence with an incredulous, "You don't even know my name. I don't even know yours."

He shrugs. "Yeah, well. For some reason I feel like I've seen you before. I'm Dennis."

That name struck something; it wasn't unusual (for the Brits); it wasn't particularly attractive, but then no British names really were; but for some reason it sounded familiar. "Don't suppose you know Harry Potter?" she asked, her voice dropping low. "Not just of him, but actually _know_ him?"

His face closes off. "I was at school with him," he answers. "I'm a few years younger."

She nods. "You might've seen me, then. My sister is married to his brother-in-law. I was in the Triwizard Tournament." She shuts her eyes for a moment and when she opens them he is looking at her, his eyes narrowed, like he's trying to remember.

"The girl from Beauxbaton's sister?" he asks, a smile thinning his lips. "I remember you. You were...wet."

Gabrielle feels a blush begin to burn her neck, which is ridiculous, because she does not blush. Men don't affect her. She always has control of these situations.

She raises her chin so the rain drips from the brim of her hat to her cheeks, cooling the heat of her shame, and says, "Well, it was nice seeing you, Dennis."

"Oh, don't be like that." He grins. "You were cute. How old were you then? Six, seven?"

"Eight." The word falls from her lips like a curse. A long time ago. Thirteen years that changed the world.

"Eight." He shakes his head, and he may be thinking something similar because his eyes darken with some emotion she can't quite read. He shakes his head, as if that movement could eradicate the charged sadness from the air. "Okay, so dinner tonight? Yes?"

She stares at him. Dennis. He's made her blush and he's survived her glare and he has not once glanced at her chest or checked out her legs. And he's asked her on a date, which has happened countless times in the last six years. Only one man had ever been successful, and Merlin, that had been a mistake. But _he_ is not this man.

"Dinner," she agrees. "At eight-thirty?"

"Sure. Where?"

She names a cheap Italian restaurant near her flat and they agree to meet there, and then he finally lets her go.

When Gabrielle arrives at the office, Martine is sitting cross-legged on her desk, eating some of the Swiss chocolate Fleur sent Gab for her birthday and flipping through Gab's calendar. "You have no life," Martine informs her friend when she drops her bag by her chair and falls gracefully into it. Gab tucks her knees under her chin and looks up at Martine.

"You are a bitch," she tells her. "There was nothing going on at the Eiffel Tower."

"No?" Martine licks the remnants of chocolate from her fingertips. "Guess my informant was wrong then. That's irrelevant to the matter at hand, though."

"And what is the matter at hand? Aside from the fact that you are going to gain twenty pounds by tomorrow, if you've eaten all that chocolate yourself."

Martine rolls her eyes. "That is what weight-reduction spells are for, whore. Anyway, the issue, as I said, is that you have no life." She waves the calendar at Gabrielle so blank square after blank square fly before Gab's eyes. "I mean, look at this thing. You have nothing written in here, aside from shit for work."

"Because it is my work calendar. Will you leave? I need to finish an article for tomorrow."

Martine shakes her head. "No. This is a serious problem. What do you do all the time, Gabrielle? Have you even been on a date since Charles?"

Gabrielle can feel anger braiding her veins together, tensing her limbs and gripping her heart in its red-hot hands. She breathes in, out, in, out, like Fleur had always told her to do whenever she felt this way. "I have a date tonight, actually. Will you go?"

"You do?" Martine's face breaks in a smile and she tosses the empty box in the bin, slipping down from Gabrielle's desk and smacking her lips against her cheek. "Brilliant! Tell me how it goes as soon as it's over, all right. I expect an owl tonight," and then she winks, "or in the morning."

"Get out of here." Gabrielle rolls her chair forward and opens her drawer, reaching for the stack of parchment.

Martine sighs and clicks away. Once she reaches her cubicle she shouts, "You're horrible and boring, Gabrielle Delacour."

Gab rolls her eyes as Nicolas, who sits in the cubicle closest to Martine, calls, "Well, you're a heartless bitch, Martine, so I think Gab's got the better end of the deal."

The exchanging of insults could have continued the whole day, but Lucia, their boss, comes crashing out of her office at the end of the corridor of cubicles and shouts, "If you lot don't shut up I swear to Merlin I will fire you all and bring in some homeless people to take your place. At least they'd be _grateful_ for the job."

Gabrielle hears Nicolas stifle a laugh, and she bites the inside of her lip as Lucia turns to glare at her. "And you, Gabrielle, why were you late today?"

Gab sighs. "Martine got a tip that there was something going on at the Eiffel Tower this morning, so I went to check it out. There was nothing there, though, and the metro was running slow."

"Why didn't you Apparate?"

"Too many tourists." No Parisian could ever deny that as a plausible response.

"Oh. Well, I expect you on time tomorrow."

"She won't be," Martine calls from her cubicle. "She's got a hot date tonight."

"We do not allow our personal lives to interfere with work," Lucia's voice is monotone and Gabrielle nods.

"Of course not. I'll be here. Don't worry."

As soon as Lucia disappears into her office, Nicolas approaches Gab's desk. He asks, his voice low, "Do you really have a date tonight?"

"Sort of," Gabrielle murmurs. "It's more like I'm meeting up with a...with an old family friend, I guess. He knows my sister's family, in Britain."

"Good for you, Gab." Nicolas reaches out and ruffles her hair—rather ineffectively, due to the braid—and grins at her. "I'm happy you're getting out."

"It's not like I just sit at home naming my ever-increasing collection of cats, you know."

"I know, Gab sweetie, I know." For some reason she doesn't quite believe him.

She doesn't finish her article until seven that night, and she Disapparates from the office straight to her bedroom, where she opens her wardrobe and flicks through hanger after hanger of rarely-worn-dresses. She can't imagine herself in any of them, and eventually returns to the skinny jeans piled on her bed, pairing the darkest blue with a deep green top and silver ballet flats.

She brushes her hair until it glows and coats her lashes until they're dark enough to make her eyes burn like supernovas, and she stares at herself in the mirror until she is certain that Dennis will find it difficult to discomfort her tonight. She'll make him uncomfortable immediately. Looking like that, she'll wreck all his unwitting self-confidence the way meteors smash through mountains.

He's waiting for her at the entrance to the restaurant, and he waves when he sees her coming. He doesn't blink at the darkness of her lashes or the brightness of her hair or the shine of her eyes. Dennis doesn't react to her at all, aside from that smile and that wave—like they're two normal people meeting for a normal dinner.

But they are not normal, she thinks. She follows him inside the restaurant, and she knows that they are both broken.

After they've been seated by the window he tugs the hat from his head, sending his brown hair frizzing up into a halo. Gab hides a smirk as he smoothes it down and asks, "So, did you have a good day?"

"I've had better," she answers. She sips at the red wine they've been served and tries to remember the last time she felt this out of place.

"Me, too." He carries on as if she's not treating him like nothing, no one. "I mean, it started off all right, with meeting you and everything, but then I went to the _Patisserie_ and I don't know if you noticed but my French is rather atrocious and the woman at the till didn't understand when I asked for a croissant and so I had to spell it out for her, and then after that I got back to my apartment and found that all of my cat's food had somehow spoiled, so I had to go out and get more for her, and then I got a note from Harry because he had a question for me about some French tradition which I clearly knew nothing about because I am not French and then I got lost going to Berthillon to get some ice cream and then I got lost coming here, so...all in all, not a perfect day."

Gabrielle stares at him. He has used as many words as she uses in a day in a single sentence. He is silent now, though, and she feels the pressure on her tongue that tells her she should speak. "How long have you been in Paris?"

"Two months. I know, I know, I should be able to find my way around by now. But I'd forgotten my map this morning and I thought that I was fine. Apparently I was not."

Gabrielle shrugs. "I still get lost sometimes," she confesses. "Paris is a beautiful labyrinth, but it _is_ a labyrinth. When you forget that, it can catch you in its streets."

He smiles. "Thanks. That actually makes me feel better."

"Although you really should work on your accent, if you're planning on staying here," she continues. "I mean, I could barely understand you this morning when you tried speaking French."

He groans. "It's just so difficult. All those throaty noises. It's a very...involved...language. English is easier."

"You're just lazy." She grins at him and finds herself offering, "Tell you what. I'll help you out with your French if you promise to buy me a croissant at the end of it."

He looks surprised, and she can't blame him, because she is surprised and the words have fallen inexplicably from her own mouth. But he likes to talk, and he likes to talk to her, and those two preferences have not combined in a single person since her first few years at school.

"Are you sure?"

It would be easy to tell him that she was joking, but it would also be sad, and so she says, "Of course I'm sure. We can meet in a café by my work at lunch, if you can make it there."

And he says okay and she says okay and they make arrangements to meet every day that week for an hour.

They do; they meet that week and the next, but Dennis doesn't ask Gabrielle out to dinner again, or out for breakfast, or to anything other than the daily coffee where she—and the waiters—grill him on pronunciation.

"Merlin, this is agonizing," he tells her at their seventeenth meeting.

"French is not agonizing," she says. "It is lovely. Prettier than English, with your harsh noises and angry consonants."

"But, Gab," his voice is inching dangerously close to a whine, "it is so difficult."

"So is life. Somehow you're still doing _that_." The words have slipped out before Gab can think about how they'll sound, and she only realises their morbidity when Dennis raises his eyebrows at her.

"Are you feeling okay, Gabrielle?" he asks. "Do you need to talk about something?"

"I'm fine. I'm just saying, it is a generally accepted fact that life sort of sucks. And since you're still living, you can learn French. I have faith in you." She sips from her coffee, ignoring the incredulous look on his face. "You have come a long way."

"You have," one of the waiters says as he drops the bill off at a table near them. "I can almost understand you sometimes."

Dennis drops his face into his hands and groans. "_Gabrielle_," he whines. "Please, help me."

"I have been." She sighs, then reaches for his hands and pulls them away from his eyes. "Maybe a change of location will help. Why don't you come to my flat tomorrow night? We'll order in food and practise your French after dinner." She feels bold suggesting it; she hasn't had anyone into her flat since Charles's disastrous last night, when he told her she was cold and beautiful and he loved her hair and her skin but he'd never loved her.

Dennis nods. There is something bright in his eyes when he says, "That sounds good."

"Great. Do you have your map on you?" Gabrielle shows him which metro lines to take to get to her flat and leaves him sitting alone at the table, mouthing the word "_oiseau_" over and over into his coffee cup.

He arrives early the next night, and she hasn't quite finished moving her piles of scarves and jeans from the couch to her bedroom. She lets him in and he collapses among the tangles of coloured cloth. "Gab," he begins, picking up a scarf and winding it around his hands like it's the most natural thing in the world, "do you think we can take tonight off from French?"

She rolls her eyes. Typical Dennis. "No," she tells him. "Tonight is _about_ French."

"I thought tonight was about getting to know me better," he says, sticking his lower lip out in a mock pout.

She doesn't respond. He's been trying this sort of thing out on her—this teasing, this friendship-maybe-something-more thing—and she refuses to give in. Because if they are friends (and maybe they are) it's happened accidentally, and she doesn't want him to coerce her into anything else, anything closer.

They eat crêpes seated on the floor, while she quizzes him on the words he has the most difficulty with, mostly involving "r"s, because those hurt to hear.

After two hours, he collapses back on her carpet and says to the ceiling, "Gabrielle Delacour will you please stop?"

She had been reading to him from _Le Petit prince_, so that he can repeat the page after her, but she cuts off midsentence. "Stop what?"

"Teaching me French. For tonight. I appreciate you helping me, I do." He sits up. "I really really do. But just tonight, can't we do something else?"

She looks at him. He doesn't ask for much, she realises, and he hasn't ever made her wish that she had never spoken to him that day by the Eiffel Tower.

"Okay," she says, setting _Le Petit prince_ beside her. "What do you want to do?"

"You mean it?"

"Yes, Dennis. We can stop practising French tonight."

He jumps to his feet and says, "You are brilliant, Gabrielle."

She ignores this. "What do you want to do?" she asks again.

"Let's go out on the town."

"To a bar?"

"Sure, if you want to. Or we could just go out and see where the city takes us."

She shrugs and disappears in her kitchen, returning with a barely-begun bottle of wine. The city will take them to the Seine, it always does, and wine tastes best on its banks.

Gabrielle doesn't say anything as they wander through the streets, but her silence is always okay with Dennis. He fills the air with news of Britain and the gossip from his building and her quietness doesn't feel abnormal.

They find a spot by the dark water and Gab hands him the bottle of wine. As they pass it between each other even Dennis falls silent. They sit there for hours, breathing visible clouds into the air, not speaking. The wine sends Gabrielle into a peaceful lethargy, and she lets her head fall against Dennis's shoulder. He doesn't touch her, but he doesn't push her away, either.

He finally nudges her and whispers, "Gabrielle? We should probably get going."

"Okay," she murmurs sleepily, pressing her palms down on the cold concrete until she manages to get to her feet. She reaches for Dennis's arm as soon as he's standing beside her and says, "Lead on, Denny."

If she were sober she would be horrified at the fondness in his eyes as he starts leading her home. But she is not, and so she doesn't notice that he keeps looking at her like he could love her, someday.

He leaves her in her kitchen with a glass of water and Floos from her fireplace to his own flat. She falls asleep at her table, her face pressed against the polished wood. She feels peaceful, sleeping like that, caught somewhere between drunk and really happy—caught somewhere in her past or maybe her future.

After three more days of French lessons at the café, Dennis once again begins complaining. "Gab, can't we go somewhere else?"

She shakes her head. "You didn't learn much when we went to my place," she tells him.

He mutters, "I did. Just not about fucking French."

"Come on, Dennis, you're doing so well."

"Good. So reward me by coming over to mine tomorrow night."

She hesitates. For some reason this feels dangerous. She knows him and she likes him and it shouldn't, but it does.

"Why?" she asks.

"Because friends hang out at each other's places. And I've been to yours, so why shouldn't you come to mine?"

"Fine. Where do you live?"

The next night she brings him a bottle of wine, and he answers the door with a platter of oven-warmed chips as an appetiser.

"Sorry it's not fancier," he tells her as they sit down at his table, and she laughs.

"At least you cooked; I just ordered in, remember?"

She feels something in the air as they eat. Dennis is talking just as much as normal, and she is not-talking just as much as normal, but for some reason tonight feels different.

Gabrielle interrupts him, for the first time. "Do you ever think about going home?" she asks.

"Home to England?"

Where else would she mean? She nods.

"I did. A lot. Not recently, though."

"What's changed?" Gabrielle knows that she shouldn't ask. She knows that the answer will be the one she's both dreading and hoping for—she likes Dennis the way she liked Charles, except that he doesn't scare her, he doesn't push her out of herself, and so she likes him more.

She remembers when they first met by the Eiffel Tower and he made her blush. She knows that at that moment she wanted to make him turn a brighter red, but she hasn't succeeded in making him flush until now. And now his skin is lobster-red, and she feels guilty for pushing.

"Well," he says, drawing the word out, "I've got you, now. As a friend, I mean. I've got a friend. Who speaks French. And that has made a big difference."

She wants to ask him more questions. Gabrielle wants to know him, and that is terrifying. She can't help herself as she says, "You've made it better for me, too. Even though you can't speak French."

He laughs, and they both relax a little. "I thought you said I was getting better?"

"Better does not mean that you're comprehensible."

Dennis rolls his eyes. "Enough about French. Do you want ice cream?"

"Is Berthillon open?"

"No." He shakes his head. "But I have some here. We could eat some and play cards or read or shout obscenities out the window, whatever you want."

"Let's not do that last one." She stands and clears their dinner dishes while Dennis scoops ice cream for the both of them, and they sit on his couch. They end up talking—Dennis ends up talking—and Gabrielle falls asleep, her head pillowed on the end of the couch, her feet in Dennis's lap.

She wakes a few hours later to a flash of light.

"What?" Gabrielle rolls over and finds Dennis at the window, a camera hanging loosely from his hand.

"Oh, shit, sorry Gab." He holds up the camera as an explanation, "I forgot to turn the flash off—I was trying to get a photo of the city." He shrugs. "My mum sent me an owl asking for a picture of it at night, you know, and I just remembered."

Gab can feel all the tenseness from the _before_ bursting back into her body. "You have a camera."

"Doesn't everyone?" he sets the clunky device on the counter and comes over to her. "You can go back to sleep, I didn't mean to wake you."

"But that's a nice camera." She is staring at it like something from a nightmare.

He nods. "Yeah. It's not...It belonged to someone else before me."

She doesn't say anything.

"Do you want to see it?" He reaches to take it from the counter and holds it out to her, dangling it by the strap.

"No," she snaps. "Sorry, Dennis, I've got to go."

She reaches for where her coat has fallen to the floor, but Dennis grabs it before she can. "What's wrong, Gabby? I can't fix it unless you tell me."

"You can't fix it," she grinds out. "_It_ is unfixable."

"Well, tell me then. Tell me what's so horrible that you run away whenever things start going well."

"How do you know I do that?" She has her arms crossed tight over her stomach and she's looking up at him and she wishes she were anywhere, anywhere else. "I've never done that with you, have I?"

"You're always pulling away, Gabrielle. It's like a constant state for you. Merlin, all I want is to know _why_. Why can't you just tell me?"

"Because I didn't hurt the way everyone else did," she says. She is looking at her feet, flat on his floor, and at his feet, less than eight centimetres away from hers.

"What do you mean?" He kneels down so that his body has joined his feet, so that his face is there. So that he can see her eyes. He wants to know her, and it is stupid that she still can't get away from him.

"I mean that all I had of the War was one night, and it ruined me." She bites her lip. He was there for it, at Hogwarts for it, he probably has scars that cut so deeply that sometimes he can barely breathe. And she..."I was at my sister's wedding and I was taking pictures. I'd never seen Fleur so happy. And Bill and my parents—they were all laughing and crying and smiling. And Fleur had given me a camera the night before and she asked me to take pictures of _everything_. And so I was, and then...and then..._they_ came, and there were screams, and Harry and Ron and Hermione were gone, and somehow I just kept taking pictures, more pictures, even though I didn't want to. And afterwards, when I was home, and Fleur was still there, fighting...I looked through them." She raises her eyes to find that he is looking at her but he is not judging her. Not visibly. "And everyone was terrified." She shakes her head. "And I cowered in France and that was okay because I was young, but everyone over there fought and fought and I knew that they were scared—I had proof of it—but they kept fighting." She raises one hand hesitantly to Dennis's cheek and brushes her fingertips against his skin. "You kept fighting."

He sighs. "Gabrielle, we had no choice. Some of us were stupid about it. My older brother," his voice cracks but she refuses to look away. "He had been safe, but he went back for the final battle. Colin had that reckless idiocy to him. He was always more outgoing and stupider than I was. But I wish I had gone with him that night. It's awful, but if I had been there, I'd have been the slowest one—I'd have gotten killed first, and maybe it would have given him time." Dennis is blurry in front of her. She wishes that she were strong enough to hear these words without thanking all the forces in the universe that he did not accompany his brother on his suicide mission. Dennis coughs before continuing, "That camera was his. He always had it with him; he loved photography."

They aren't moving. Gabrielle's hands are in her lap and Dennis's are pressed against the floor, keeping his balance.

"But doesn't that make you hate photography? I hate it, and it's only from one night. Not a whole lifetime of memories."

Dennis shrugs. "He loved it. I can't hate something he loved, although sometimes I wish I could."

"Do you think it's unhealthy?"

"What?" The space between them feels bigger now, even though neither of them have moved.

"The way I am. The way I can't get past that night. You lost someone, you lost a lot of people, but you're mostly okay. Why am I not okay?"

"Gab, I'm not even moderately okay. I put up a better front than you, maybe, but Merlin, look at me. I moved to France to get away from all the memories, to get away from my poor parents, who aren't even magic, who can't even understand. I left a good job to come here and wander around a city I don't love trying to speak a language I don't understand. And then I run into you—and Gabrielle, you are beautiful, but you are visibly broken—and I think that maybe you'll be good for me, a distraction, but all I'm doing is reaching for you and all you're doing is pulling away and none of this is healthy." He shakes his head. "We don't even really know each other."

"You know me," she tells him. "You know me better than anyone else."

He chuckles, a heartbreaking sound. "I'm sorry, Gabby, but that doesn't mean much."

"But," she pleads, "what are you saying? That we can't—do whatever anymore?"

"I don't know, Gabrielle." He lifts his hands from the floor and runs them through his hair, sending it up from his head. "I didn't even know we were doing anything."

"We were friends," she speaks softly, like she's confessing to him.

"Were we? Is that what it's like to be your friend? To always make the first move?"

"I invited you over first," she says, even though now that feels inadequate.

"After I practically begged."

He looks at her again, and this time his eyes are hard—she's never seen him this upset before. And she realises with a sick feeling to her stomach that she has been hurting him—slowly digging razor sharp beneath his skin—every time she acts as if he means nothing to her.

She wants to touch him again, but the air between them is thick with his hurt and hers, so she grips her hands together and begins, "I am awful at this. At feeling, I mean. I have reasons, but they're all stupid, and it's mostly because I'm scared." He is still looking at her, his face a little more giving now, his eyes a little less harsh. "But you're the first person I've met in a long time to make me feel like the fear is worth it."

"I cannot do this, Gabby. I can't speak in riddles the way you do; I can't figure you out. I need you to tell me something real."

She's still making a mess of things. "I'm trying. I told you I'm bad at this. Look, Dennis, I haven't even kissed anyone in three years. You've noticed that I am quite good at pushing people away. But you've stayed and you're still here," although it occurs to her that that might be because they are in his flat, "and you amaze me. Every day, you astonish me a little more, about something new. I'm not going to tell you that I love you, because I don't know if I do, but I know that I do like you and that sometimes I think about kissing you and touching you and everything and the thought of you touching me doesn't make me feel like a _thing_, like something pretty to be tossed around, and I do like you. I like you a lot." She inhales because he has not looked away from her but he has not spoken, either. "And that is rare, Dennis. If you like me at all, in any way, even though I am horrid and selfish and cold, if you like me despite all that, then I cannot just let you go—I can't make you go away this time."

"You know that I'm pushy and lazy and boring, right?" he asks. "I am twenty-five and I've done nothing with my life. I can't even speak French properly, despite your extraordinary efforts."

"What are you doing?" Gabrielle asks.

"I am telling you that I have flaws; that we are having this conversation not just because of you and your neuroses, but because of me and mine."

Gabrielle laughs. "Of course I know that you have flaws. I saw your flaws before I knew you."

"Oh, good, well that's comforting."

She can breathe again, now that he doesn't seem to want her gone. Her eyes flick from his eyes to his lips and then she slides from the couch to the floor in front of him and she leans forward tentatively. He follows the angle of her head and brings his lips to hers, and the kiss is nothing like dreams—there are no fireworks, and they both taste rather like tomato sauce—but they'll get better, with practise.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** I hope that I didn't destroy Paris or France or the French language in this, and that it was worthy of your Dennis and Gabrielle, Tat!


	2. dominique and teddy

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Harry Potter_.

Pairing: Dominique Weasley + Teddy Lupin  
><span>For<span>: Ela (_waltzingvelocity_)  
><span>Prompt<span>: Musicals

:::

shipwrecked sister

I try out a smile and aim it at you  
>you must have missed it; you always do<br>ellie goulding : the writer

The summer before Dominique's sixth year she came downstairs at two in the afternoon every day and found the Charmed television in the living room alive with colour. Three heads peeked over the back of the couch: blue hair, blonde hair, brown hair, and two voices wavered along to the choruses of the most famous Muggle musicals.

At first, Dominique didn't mind. She passed through the room without speaking to her sister or her sister's boyfriend or his best friend. She grabbed the carton of orange juice from the fridge and poured some into her mouth, then snatched a piece of bread from the loaf by the stove and stuck it in her mouth while walking back through the living room to the stairs and her sanctuary. She figured that everyone needed a guilty pleasure, and if Muggle musicals playing and replaying on the television that Roxy and Vic had muddled around with back in Vic's third year made the three of them happy, then that was okay. Victoire, Teddy, and Graham were all working at a pub in town while they sorted out what they wanted to do with the rest of their lives. Victoire had just finished Hogwarts, so her period of indecision had not yet reached the colossal lengths of Teddy's and Graham's now year-long uncertainty. If they wanted to spend their days off singing along to musicals and eating crisps, then whatever. Dominique had more important things to deal with, namely the nightly parties Georgiana Nott threw at her parents' mansion, and the ensuing hangovers.

But three weeks into the summer holidays Victoire and Graham had learned the words to every song of every musical they owned, and even _The Sound of Music_ and _Rent_—both of which Dominique had once considered acceptable, if not brilliant—had grown tiresome. It happened at eleven in the morning. The sun was heating her room to the interminable stuffiness of the highest tower at Hogwarts during a firestorm; Dominique hadn't even pulled her duvet from the floor when she fell into bed at four and her skin was sticky with sweat and she could hear something horrible beyond the closed door of her bedroom.

The noise almost matched the tune of "The Lonely Goatherd" but it hurt a lot more than that song ever did when Julie Andrews sang it. Dominique rolled out of bed and winced as her feet hit the grey carpet; her body was not meant to move after drinking that much. She persisted, though, because the noise was still coming up the stairs, the off-tone clashing of Graham's deep voice and Victoire's high one, his rumble and her screech, and Dominique could not bear to have the air full of such an offence to music.

She landed at the base of the stairs and blinked into the harsh light of the morning and said, her voice hard, "Would you two please shut the _fuck_ up?"

Victoire's face appeared over the edge of the couch and Teddy's turned so she could see one of his eyes—grey today—and Graham grinned at her. "You don't look so good today, Dom." He was practically shouting over the sound of the television.

"You will never be a singer," Dominique informed him.

"Ouch," Victoire said. "What's got you all upset this morning?"

"Your 'singing' sucks." Dominique ran her hand through her blonde hair so it stuck up in short tufts. "And I hate musicals."

"_Thank_ you," Teddy spoke for the first time. "See, guys, I've been telling you, not everyone thinks these are the best things Muggles contributed to the world."

"I'd go so far to say they are the worst," Dominique put in. "And if you must watch them, can't you please do it with the sound off? Or at least stop singing along because you are not improving them."

"What even is the point of watching them with the sound off?" Graham asked.

"And shut it, Teddy. We voted two to one, you lost," Victoire added.

"I live here too, though," Dominique pointed out. "Don't I get a say?"

"No."

"What about Louis? You know he hates musicals," she tried, even though Louis was volunteering at the Ministry this summer and therefore was staying with their Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny until August.

"Go away, Dom." Victoire turned around to face the television again; the figures on the screen were no longer singing about goats and herders, but Dominique knew it was only a brief reprieve.

"Fine. But could you at least turn the volume down?" she pleaded. "It's given me a headache."

"I don't think the music is what's given you a headache," Victoire muttered, "but fine, we'll keep it down."

"Thank you." Dominique returned to her bed and slept until her skin stopped humming with pain leftover from stupid decisions.

After that morning, whenever she walked through the living room and found the three of them watching people dancing and harmonising across the screen, she made biting comments. Teddy always laughed and Victoire sometimes chucked a pillow at her as she continued on to the kitchen and Graham always said something like, "I'd like to see you try to sing, Dom." But they didn't stop watching them, even though Teddy's head was often thrown over the curve of the couch, his eyes shut, as Vic and Graham watched the television on either side of him.

Dominique was out on the shore one evening in July, sitting cross-legged on the pebbled beach and tapping an unlit cigarette against one bare knee. She flicked her lighter and watched as the flame furled up into the semi-darkness before sparking and fading out. She wasn't really interested in smoking—the cigarettes were actually Elliot Zabini's—but she was bored and Georgie's parents were home from Venice and so her house was off-limits and her own parents were spending the week in Paris and so she was trapped here but also not restricted from doing whatever she wanted to do.

But she didn't know what that was, and so she sat on the beach with a lighter in one hand and a cigarette in the other and she didn't put them together because she wasn't certain that she wanted to.

"Hey, Dom."

She glanced over her shoulder to see Teddy walking barefoot across the beach toward her. He had his hands stuck in the pockets of his shorts and the red of his tee-shirt contrasted sharply with the aqua of his hair. He sat beside her and she tucked the cigarette and the lighter beneath her leg, but he noticed them anyway.

"Vic would kill you, if she knew you smoked."

Dom shrugged. "I don't usually."

"Sure." Teddy dug around the pebbles with his index finger.

"Get bored with whatever rubbish musical they're watching tonight?"

"Merlin," Teddy exploded. "You would think, wouldn't you, that after they've watched every musical you own twice, that they'd be ready to move on to something else. But no, no, they need to watch every one _again_. It is miserable, Dom."

"I know. I don't know why you're putting up with it. Do you really want to spend the time you're not working undergoing assault of the ears?"

He shook his head. "But," he hesitated, "I promised Victoire we'd spend time together this summer. And work doesn't really count, since it's all just running around filling orders."

"But she should do something you enjoy, too."

"Two to one." Teddy's voice was monotone. "I lost."

Dominique had been noticing something lately. It wasn't something she'd wanted to notice, or something she had any particular interest in, but when she came into the living room, Victoire and Graham's feet were propped on the table, angled toward each other, crossing the space between them that Teddy filled on the couch. She noticed that Victoire didn't seem to mind that Teddy slept through the musicals. She'd noticed that when they made dinner Graham and Victoire worked around Teddy, who stood at the sink doing dishes or setting the table while the other two cooked. And these things that she'd noticed could have been insignificant but Teddy was sitting beside her—and he didn't really know her, not at all—and his girlfriend and his best friend were still in the house.

And he didn't really seem to care, even when Dominique said, "You're losing her."

He rubbed the back of his neck and looked out at the ocean. "It happens. Or I guess it's happening."

"Aren't you going to...I don't know...just end it?"

"Victoire needs to realise first."

"You don't think she has?"

"Not consciously. But you know," he shrugged, "I could just break it off. But then Graham would have to choose between us, and if she's unsure then he might choose me and I couldn't bear to be the one to ruin their friendship—all of our friendship." He stood up and brushed off his hands on his shorts. "You coming in?"

Dominique shook her head. "I think I'm going to smoke this." She rolled the cigarette between her lips and leaned into the lighter, inhaling while it burnt. "Because," she blew a spiral of smoke out to sea, "I was going to someday. Might as well make it today."

Teddy rolled his ever-changing eyes. "You are not going to teach me life lessons with a cigarette, Weasley."

He left her as she called after him, "I can try, Lupin. I can always try."

Elliot Zabini appeared in her bedroom a few weeks later. It was early August and it was hot and she was lying on her bed with her blouse unbuttoned and her shorts off. He had climbed up the trellis outside her window and fallen through onto her carpet without so much as a, "Hey, Dom, you look a little undressed, maybe I'll wait for you to come let me in the front, yeah?"

He stood up and brushed off his hands on his jeans and grinned at her, his dark eyes swooping down her legs and up over her pale skin until he reached her eyes. She didn't move to cover up; this was Elliot, he knew her.

"Weasley," he nodded, as if they were meeting on the street.

"Zabini, what's up?"

He sat at the edge of her unmade bed and traced a pattern over the top of her right foot, up around her ankle and circling his fingertips on her shin. She didn't pull away.

"I came over to pick up the cigarettes I left at Georgie's last party. But I could tell you I came here because I realised I'm in love with you if you'd rather."

Dominique rolled her eyes and turned on her side, sticking her arm beneath her bed and running her fingers beneath the pile of clothes there. She sat back up and handed Elliot his cigarettes; she was glad she'd only smoked one when he flipped open the box to count.

"Damn Georgie, she promised she hadn't taken any," Elliot muttered.

"Can't forget your things when there's a Slytherin about, darling." Dominique pointed out, only too glad to have the blame fall on her best friend. "Which is why I secured them for you before the night was over."

"I know the laws of being Slytherin better than you, sweetheart." He placed his hands on either side of her legs and leaned in close, so his dark lips were centimetres from hers. "Seeing as how I am one."

She laughed. "I'm smarter," she told him, sticking her tongue out just as he bent his mouth to her neck and ran his tongue over her skin before biting lightly.

"Think so?" he growled, pressing her back against her pillows and running his hands down her ribs.

She moved her hands beneath his shirt and tugged it up and over his shoulders, her eyes skimming over his smooth chest and down his abs and her hands followed her gaze, then slipped around to his back and pressed against his skin. "Know so," she replied as her lips finally met his and their skin touched in other places and it was easy because they knew each other.

Sudden banging at Dom's door interrupted the movement of Elliot's hands, just at her waist, his fingers caught in the elastic of her pants.

"Dom," Teddy begged through the door. "Dom, they're watching _Cats_. I didn't think this could get any worse, but, honestly, _Cats_. Can I come in?"

Elliot's eyes were accusatory. Dom lifted her right hand from the button on his jeans to press a finger to his lips and called, "I'm sort of busy at the moment, Ted."

"But _Cats_, Dom. I can't take any more of it. They're all running around in leotards and singing and meowing and it's just bloody awful. _Please_ let me in. I promise I won't make any noise."

Elliot didn't take his eyes from hers. She sighed. "Sorry, Lupin, no can do."

Elliot nodded slowly. "Victoire's boyfriend?" he mouthed at Dominique. She nodded as Teddy whined, "I am positively begging, Dom."

Elliot bit the tip of Dom's finger and said, "Unless you want to get topless too, Lupin, then you probably should go back to your meowing friends."

Dom hissed, "Bastard," as the tap of Teddy's fist against the door ceased abruptly.

"Oh. Shit. Sorry." He sounded mortified.

"Not a problem, man," Elliot called. "Just don't do it again." 

They listened as Teddy's footsteps hurried back down the hall, and then Elliot leaned back down toward her. His lips hit hers and she thought about telling him to fuck off but then his hands started moving again and any sense of self-preservation was lost to his touch.

After he kissed her and tucked his cigarettes in his pocket and climbed back out her window, and she pulled on her shorts and buttoned her shirt and went to find Teddy.

The downstairs was silent, and Victoire's door was closed. Dominique found him on the beach, sitting with his back to the house.

"Hey." She sat beside him, and he glanced over at her, a blush burning his cheeks and his eyes and hair a warm brown.

"Hi." Even that word sounded awkward.

"So, um, that was—"

"Uncomfortable."

"Yeah." She pulled her knees to her chin and stared straight ahead.

"Sorry," he offered.

"You didn't know."

"Still." He hesitated. "I just broke it off with Victoire."

"You did?" She turned to look at him. His skin was still flushed but his hair was back to blue. "Just now?"

"Yeah. _Cats_ was the last straw." He attempted a grin. It was almost successful.

"I'm sorry," she said. "That must hurt."

He shrugged. "Honestly, it didn't. Not as much as I expected it to. And now she and Graham are free to fall in love or whatever and I'm free to...not watch musicals." He snorted. "I think I got the better end of the deal."

"So..." Dominique began. "Not to be rude, or anything, but what are you still doing here?"

He sighed. "I just wanted to make sure that it wasn't awkward between us."

"Between you and me?" She laughed. "Why would it be awkward between us? It's not like you walked in on me having sex or anything."

"It's just so weird," he said, "because to me you've always been Dom, never," and his voice dipped low, drawing out the syllables, "_Dominique_."

She looked at him and wondered how someone could say something so offensive so innocuously, how he was grinning at her when he'd basically told her she was like a guy to him. But his grin was infectious and besides he'd just said _Dominique_ like he was trying to seduce her and so she grinned back. She started laughing when he did.

"Merlin, Teddy. You're insufferable."

"I know." He stood and she followed him. They faced each other on the beach as he asked, "So, we're okay?"

"We're good," she promised. "And I'll never bring up _Cats _ever again."

"Brilliant." He pulled his wand from his pocket and twirled it in his left hand.

"See you?" She tried not to make it a question, but the words lifted on their own.

"See you, _Dominique_." They were both smiling when he Disapparated.

:::

But they didn't see each other again. Or, they did, but not for a long time. Not until after Dominique had finished her seventh year, when Victoire and Graham moved in together, after some discussions with Victoire's grandparents about the "proper time for marriage" and a series of agonising flat searches which Dominique had only been minimally involved in.

She had helped organise the party, though, and so she was lingering by the kitchen as Vic and Graham's friends began arriving. Dominique didn't really know too many of them; she and her sister had run in different circles at Hogwarts. And Dominique had even drifted away from her own close friends after sixth year sent her to the edge of insanity; she had stopped being happy when everything she did burnt a web of craziness into her mind.

She felt uncomfortable, standing there in her sister's flat. She tucked some shoulder-length blonde hair behind her ear and waited for some sign that she could make her escape. But just as she decided that no one needed her, Teddy cut through the crowd, his eyes on her.

"Hey." His hair was brown instead of blue and his eyes were hazel and he looked more normal than he ever had as a teenager, which she supposed was a good thing but it also made her sad.

"Teddy, hi!" She reached out to hug him. He tentatively returned the greeting and she realised that they hadn't ever touched before and that he felt better than she'd expected, stronger, more solid than he looked. He let go first.

"How've you been?" Teddy asked, leaning against the wall beside her.

"Good, I've been good. How about you?"

"Good."

The awkwardness was about to reach its unsalvageable peak when he asked, "Vic tells me you've started working at the Department of Mysteries. That must be interesting."

"It has been. But I'm not really involved in anything too deep, you know, because I'm so new. The oldest employees are the only ones they trust with the real secret stuff—they want to know you're in it for good."

"That makes sense."

"I guess. It would be more interesting for me if they'd let me in on some of the more dangerous cases, though." She shrugged. "So what've you been up to for the last couple of years? Vic said you'd moved to London, too."

"Yeah. I'm working for Fire and Broomsticks—the manufacturers of the Firebolt series? I'm a flight technician."

"Oh, awesome. Do you get lots of sweet swag?"

"As in free broomsticks?" He laughed. "No. They did give me some broomstick polish the other day, though."

"Well, hey, that's something." Dom liked the way his eyes looked when he laughed, like the light from the moon outside had settled on his irises.

"It is. I now never need to worry about having a less-than-shiny broom again." He glanced at her empty hands. "Do you want something to drink? I saw wine in the kitchen, and there's beer." He held up his nearly-empty bottle.

"No, I'm fine, thanks." He looked taken aback and she explained, "I don't drink very much anymore." Or at all, but she didn't want to seem like a total downer.

"Oh." He shifted his bottle from one hand to the other and she rolled her eyes.

"Merlin, stop looking like that. Just because I don't drink doesn't mean you can't."

"What made you...you know, give it up? Last time I saw you, you were..." he teetered off, his lower lip rolled between his teeth, his expression hesitant.

"I was too much," she finished. "I was unhealthy."

He sighed. "I was going to say..." He glanced around. "I hear that Vic and Graham have a nice balcony. Want to go out there?"

She shook her head, partially at the change in subject, partially in response to his question. "No. I'm pretty sure I saw Louis and Charlotte go out there, and chances are they won't want to be interrupted." Teddy looked caught there, in the middle of all of his old friends, so she continued, "I'm pretty sure Vic will need some more ice soon, though. We could Charm some, but it never works as well as the Muggle stuff. Want to go down to the Tesco on the corner with me?"

"Sure." He set his beer bottle on the coffee table and followed her from the flat. They walked down the stairs in silence, and then when they were out on the street Dominique couldn't handle the sound of nothing between them.

"What were you going to say?" she prompted, even though she wasn't sure she wanted to know.

"It sounds strange," he warned, "but I was thinking that you seemed hard back then—you were all edges, all bitterness. You made poor decisions, but they were the kind that people grow old regretting _not_ making, you know?"

Dominique thought about who she'd been two years before. She thought he might have had her wrong. "I wasn't hard, Teddy. I don't know what I was, but I wasn't hard."

"I didn't mean it as an insult," he explained. Cars were passing them, headlights highlighting the colour of Teddy's hair.

"I know you didn't. I'm just saying, maybe I acted like I was tough, or whatever, but I wasn't. I cared too much, back then."

He laughed. "Merlin, you never behaved like you cared at all. Do you remember that time you told me I was losing Victoire, all blunt and in the open? And I had known that I was, but hearing you say it like that, it just made me realise how wrong we'd been to keep it going for as long as we had."

"You say I was blunt? Remember how you told me you basically thought of me as one of the guys?"

He shook his head. "I never said that. I just said that I never thought that you were having sex."

"Same thing," she pointed out, quite validly, she thought.

"It isn't, not at all." He led the way through the automatic doors into the Tesco, but stopped by the section of ready-made meals. She looked up at him. He looked different in the electric light of the supermarket. "You were always beautiful, Dom. I always knew you were not 'one of the guys.'"

"Whatever." Dom rolled her eyes. "That was years ago, Teddy. It doesn't matter."

"But you can't just make assumptions like that." He refused to move past the refrigerated sandwiches.

"Fine, fine. You always knew I was a girl. Let's get the ice, all right?"

He sighed and kicked his foot against the linoleum floor. "Fine."

Teddy didn't say anything else as Dominique led him to the back of the store and handed him two bags of ice, but just before they reached the self-checkout line he stopped her with one cold hand to the shoulder.

"Dominique," he said, and her name sounded careful on his tongue, as if he was trying it out. "You've fascinated me since the moment I met you."

That was odd. "You've known me my whole life," she pointed out.

"I know." He held the bags of ice in one arm, close to his side, and they were darkening the red of his shirt to a blood colour. His cheeks were hot and his eyes wouldn't leave hers.

"So, what. When you were three and I was born you were 'fascinated' by me? What does that even mean?"

"It means...I loved Victoire, okay? But I could look away from her sometimes. I knew I wouldn't miss anything if I watched the sunset instead of her eyes. But you—you say so much with your eyes and your lips and whenever I'm not looking at you I feel as if I'm missing a million of your emotions. You've got whole histories on your face and I've missed universes-worth just tonight. Just tonight, Dominique, imagine how many I've missed in the last seventeen years."

"What you're saying is..." She couldn't really formulate thoughts, let alone words.

"I don't want to look away from you."

Dominique couldn't hold in the laugh anymore. It ricocheted from the shelves around them and drew the attention of the other shoppers and the attendants and Teddy's eyes locked onto hers with a look sort of like astonishment. "Sorry," she said. "I'm sorry, it's just—don't you realise how _creepy_ you sound?"

He just stared at her.

She shook her head and took the ice from him. "Come on," she scanned the bags and dropped them into a plastic bag, stuffing ten quid into the machine and collecting the coins it spat back without glancing at them. Once they were back on the street, she turned to face him again. "Here's the thing. You look at me and you see a girl you were almost friends with one summer, someone you've known almost your whole life. And you know I'm pretty—Merlin, I've got fucking Veela genes, I'm practically a goddess—and maybe you think I'm lonely and you might be lonely too, and so you think it'd be easy. But it wouldn't be. Because we know shit about each other, because I'm better but I'm still a disaster, and because you're too romantic, too idealistic." Teddy looked about to defend himself, so she continued, "Tell me I'm a mess and confess that you're a wreck, and then maybe we could try being friends."

"You don't know what I'm feeling," he said, his voice low but steady.

"But I know what you're not feeling. Look, either we give friendship a try or we stick to small talk. I can't think about anything more right now."

He stood there in silence. He still looked offended and self-righteous when he muttered, "You're a mess and I'm a wreck."

"Glad we got that sorted. Ready to go back to the party?"

Two days later Dominique sent Teddy an owl and invited him out to breakfast in London. They met at the restaurant and sat in awkward silence for a few minutes, until Dominique finally broke down and told him about a new case at work, even though she wasn't supposed to tell anyone.

The next day Teddy invited her to a picnic lunch with him by the Thames.

Three days later they went to the Leaky Cauldron, and ten days after that they met at the statue of Peter Pan in Hyde Park and seventeen days later she asked him, "Are you still thinking I have universes on my face or whatever?"

He blushed. "I might have had a little too much to drink that night. Could we please not mention it ever again?"

"Oh, no." They were sitting on a bench by the Tower and it was raining—a light mist that fuzzed Dom's hair into a blonde mess and beaded on Teddy's, leaving his head shining. "I feel that it is something that we need to address. What is it you were hoping would happen, after you confessed to being _fascinated_ by me?"

He shook his head. "You're insufferable."

"What did you want?" she asked. "What was supposed to result from you complimenting me in a supermarket?"

"I wasn't really thinking about the place or the timing. I was just thinking that you were funny and I liked you and you were softer than you had been but still you, and that it was _you_ I'd liked, that summer, and you I'd wondered about since that summer, and you I'd talked to whenever I needed something different. I didn't want anything, other than for you to know."

Dominique could feel heat burning in her cheeks. The month or so since Victoire's party had been full of moments when she wanted to go back to that night and take back the words she'd said, where she wanted to go back and kiss Teddy in the supermarket, to go back and melt the ice between them with the heat of their skin. Because she hadn't been wrong and he hadn't been right, but she knew him now, and she wasn't sure how to tell him that maybe they could work. That now, maybe she could accept that he found her fascinating, that he maybe liked her a lot. That she liked him a lot.

She leaned closer to him, close enough that the tendrils of blonde flying away from her face brushed his forehead and his cheeks. "Bullshit. I'm betting you also wanted this." She kissed him and he kissed her back. Only their lips were touching and it felt awkward and unnatural but neither of them wanted to be the first to pull away.

He finally did and he shook his head. "No, I didn't. _This_, though..." Teddy ran his hands down her cheeks, lightly, down her neck, until they reached her shoulders and then his fingers traced her spine and stilled at her waist. His lips hit hers softer and slower and better, and she moved her hands to touch him, too. Neither of them wanted it to end and when they did break apart it was only for a moment, only long enough for Teddy to ask, "Now can I tell you I never want to look away from you?"

Long enough for Dominique to reply, "Only if I can say I never want to stop kissing you."

"Fair enough."

His eyes were open and hers were closed, but he still saw that she was happy, with him.

**A/N:** I hope you liked it!  
>(Either way, I appreciate reviews.)<p> 


	3. dominique and scorpius

**Disclaimer: **I do not own _Harry Potter_.

Pairing: Dominique Weasley + Scorpius Malfoy  
><span>For<span>: Ella (_Ellabethhh_)  
><span>Prompts<span>: lilt, skyline, incandescent, promise, clock

:::

mesmeric, magnetic, & just a bit monstrous

She woke up to banging on the bedroom door. Or she assumed it was a bedroom—she was in a bed, anyway, with a pillow beneath her head and a duvet pulled up over her back—but it didn't smell right. It smelled of old Quidditch gear, and Dominique was not in the habit of keeping Quidditch gear in her bedroom. She opened her eyes to find that she was surrounded by green. Her bedroom was blue. This looked like—

"Albus!" The banging at the door started up again and it suddenly burst open and the tall blond figure of Scorpius Malfoy stood there, talking incessantly. "Albus, I want you to do me a favour tonight and you're not allowed to say no because I covered for you with your parents when you were—oi, you're not Albus."

Dominique pushed her hair away from her cheeks and sat up to face her annoyingly human alarm clock. "Nope." Her voice felt raw.

"What're you doing here, Weasley?" It was amazing how he could make her feel small, even though he was technically three years younger. Scorpius could make a bad morning even worse.

"Not sure, Malfoy." Dominique stretched her arms over head, daring him to comment on how she was in yesterday's clothes. The last thing she remembered clearly was leaving her office at the Ministry pissed because her boss had said something about using her genes to secure them a case. But that didn't explain why she hadn't made her way to her own flat, which was right by the Ministry, and instead had come to Albus and Lily's, on the other side of the city.

"Oh, hey, Score." Lily appeared beside Scorpius and slipped past him. "Albus went out for bread, he'll be home soon." She held out a cup of coffee to Dominique. "How are you?"

"Been better," Dominique replied.

"Yeah, I bet. You seemed pretty out of it when you showed up yesterday."

"Any idea what happened?"

Scorpius snorted, and Dom glared at him while Lily replied, "Well, you came up yesterday afternoon and you mumbled something about bastard bosses and then Albus gave you some tea and you told us that you'd just quit your job and also that you were thinking about shaving your eyebrows and dyeing your hair pink—which is when I gave you a sleeping potion and dragged you into Albus's room because I figured you needed his bed more than he did. There's nothing worse than waking up from a drugged sleep on a sofa."

"You quit your job, Weasley? And you don't remember? What were you, drunk?"

"Unlike some people, Malfoy, I don't spend the majority of _my_ time taking shots and pissing on Muggle fire hydrants." Dominique stuck her legs from beneath the duvet and straightened her skirt as she stood.

"That was just _once_. Merlin, fucking Albus had to tell you, didn't he?"

"Actually, that was me." Lily dodged the curse that Scorpius sent across the room. "And your memory loss may also be my fault, Dom. I'm working on this dreamless sleeping potion that's a bit easier on the stomach than the generic one, and sometimes it erases a few hours."

Dom rolled her eyes as she flipped Albus's pillow over the covers. She was used to taking Lily's experimental potions. This memory loss was nothing compared to the time she snogged the gargoyle outside the headmaster's office at Hogwarts. But she snapped, "Thanks, Lil," anyway, mostly because it was expected.

"Well, Potter, Weasley, as cheery as this interaction has been, I must go find Albus. We have an agreement to take care of. He went to the corner store?"

"Yes, but you're not going anywhere." Lily twirled her wand in her right hand and Scorpius tensed in the doorway.

"I really don't have time, Potter," he began.

"I really don't care, Malfoy." Lily trained her wand on his heart, but she split her glare between him and Dominique, who shifted nervously by the bed. "Tonight we are having a welcome home party for James, because he has finally realized that he will never be able to speak Icelandic and so has decided to come back to the UK where he can usually speak the language. And Mum and Dad threw him the most bloody boring party of our lives two nights ago and Al and Rose and Hugo and I decided that we needed to do right by him, seeing as how all his dreams have just burnt up, metaphorically."

"Great," Dom said. "But I don't see why you need me and Malfoy."

"I was getting there," although she clearly hadn't been. "See, there's rather a lot to do to get ready for tonight, and Albus and I could really use your help. Both of your help. And by 'really use' I mean: you will help us if you want to keep all of your parts."

"But I have things to do, Potter," Scorpius whined. "Things that are—no offence—infinitely more important than cooking cocktail wieners in honour of James's return."

"Bollocks. Trying to convince Georgie to take you back is _not_ more important than cocktail wieners, Malfoy." He mouthed soundlessly and Dom snorted. Lily rolled her eyes, continuing, "Besides, you don't really _want_ Georgie back. You told Al as much last week when you lot went to the Leaky and got sloshed. You just want an easy lay." She lowered her voice to a threatening level, "So shape up, Scorpius. Tonight is about cocktail wieners and my brother—tomorrow you can go out looking for a new girl to shag. Because I have it on good authority that Georgie is through with blond gits."

Scorpius stood still in the doorway, staring at Lily as if she had grown an extra head. "I pay attention," she told him before turning to Dom. "And you, Dominique. You've just quit your job and have no direction in life. I've given you purpose—you should be thanking me."

"For a _day_," Dom mumbled, leaning down to search under Albus's bed for her shoes. They didn't seem to be there, although it was difficult to tell, as the space was occupied by piles of clothes and what appeared to be an entire year's subscription to _PlayWizard_. She wrinkled her nose as she resurfaced to find Lily still glaring at her.

"Start with a day, Dom. It'll all turn out okay." The lilt to her cousin's voice did not match the look in her narrowed eyes, and Dominique stuck out her tongue.

"Fine, I'll help. But only because I like James."

"And wieners, I bet," Scorpius muttered as Lily clapped her hands. Dominique didn't respond.

"Brilliant! All right, both of you, out into the living room. Oh, Dom, if you want clean clothes you can wear some of mine. The shirts might fit a bit tight around the boobs—I've always been so jealous of yours, you have no idea—but otherwise they'll be fine. I think everything's by the desk—don't bother looking in the wardrobe." Scorpius made a strangled sound as Lily brushed passed him and kicked the door open to her bedroom. Dom tugged it shut behind her and stood staring at the stacks of clothes on her cousin's desk, praying for something that wouldn't make her look like she belonged in the red light district. She didn't find anything.

Scorpius repeated his strangled noise when she joined him and Lily in the living room, and even Lily paled a little at just how tightly the shorts and pale green top fit her cousin. "Right," Lily muttered, "right. I'll pick up something of yours for tonight, yeah? And you'll just have to stay in today. That's perfect, actually. You and Scorpius can clean this place up and start cooking hors d'oeuvres—we won't do a full meal, obviously, that would be absurd—and Albus and I will go round and let everyone know and get the alcohol and everything."

"What, you haven't told everyone yet?" Scorpius asked, because Dom was glaring at Lily in silence.

"Of course not! If we'd already sent out invitations, you lot wouldn't have been surprised by it. But don't worry. Everyone will come. Our parties are legendary." The sound of a key scraping in the lock interrupted her and she skipped over to the door, opening it just as Albus pressed against it, nearly sending him sprawling across the entranceway.

"Welcome home, Al. Score stopped by, isn't that lovely? And," she lowered her voice, although not enough, "don't say anything about Dom's clothes. She's pretty sensitive this morning."

"_Sensitive_?" Dom hissed. "Sensitive? I look like a hooker. I have every right to be sensitive."

"Oh, now." Scorpius could barely keep his voice from shaking with suppressed mirth, "You're being a bit harsh. You'd need a little more makeup to pass for a prostitute."

"Fuck off, Malfoy," Dom snarled, and Scorpius held up his hands as Albus dropped his shopping bag on the couch, which was already covered in rubbish, and glanced from Dom to Malfoy without a change in his expression.

"Hey, Score. What're you doing here?"

"Well originally I came by to exact a favour from you. Lily, however, seems to have decided that Weasley and I will be helping you prepare for tonight's party. So I suppose I'm cleaning."

"And cooking," Lily added, from where she stood by the coat rack. "We need to go, Al, if we're going to Apparate _everywhere_ and then pick up the booze."

"Is that what we're doing?" Albus had just been about to toe off his Converse, but he stopped.

"Yes." Lily snagged her purse from the hall table and hurried back to brush light kisses across Dominique's and Scorpius's cheeks. "I promise I'll bring some clothes back for you, Dom."

"And please don't kill each other. Or blow up the flat," Albus added before he followed his sister out the door.

Scorpius and Dom looked around at the stacks of magazines and empty beer cans and takeaway boxes that scattered the living room.

"Well," Dominique finally said.

"Well," Scorpius repeated.

"Think we can finish this in twelve hours?"

Scorpius snorted. "I could Summon one of my house elves. Millie would have it clean in ten minutes."

"Hmm." Dom picked up a book and flipped it open to find that the inside had been cut out and it actually held a box of cigarettes. "I somehow think Lily might kill us if we let a house elf do work in her flat."

"She doesn't need to know." Scorpius kicked at a can and it rolled away from him, hitting something soft as it spiralled beneath the couch.

"Lily always knows," Dominique said in monotone. "We should probably start."

They lifted their wands and began sending the rubbish to the bin in the kitchen. After five minutes it still didn't seem as if they were making any impression on the overall state of the room.

Eventually Scorpius muttered, "This is revolting."

Dominique didn't respond. She found that keeping the beer cans steady as they flew across the room required concentration, and if she didn't pay attention she might end up with stains from leftover week-old (possibly month-old, possibly even older) beer spattered across the living room carpet.

Scorpius stayed silent for a few more minutes, then he sighed and said, "I mean it, Dominique. It's fucking revolting. How do your cousins live like this?"

"Beyond me," Dom ground out, her wand wavering as the can she was directing toward the bin shook slightly.

"I mean, really. Someone should do something."

"Aren't _we_?" The can tumbled into the bin.

"Well, yes, but this is temporary. Honestly, Lily and Albus could do with an army of house elves."

"If they weren't both against house elf labour. You should stop going on about that."

"What, are you going to curse me for having help at home?"

Dominique refused to respond. Scorpius tried goading her a few more times, but after she met each attack with silence he shut up and returned to banishing rubbish to its proper place.

When they finally found the carpet—a pale grey that Dominique hoped was its natural colour—Scorpius cast a cleaning Charm on it as Dominique attacked the cushions on the sofa. She collapsed back onto the couch and stretched her legs out onto the table.

"Please tell me that didn't take as long as I think it did." She shook her wrist, staring at her watch as if she could will it backwards.

"It did." Scorpius fell down in the armchair across from her, his legs dangling long over the arm. "This sucks."

"I hate Lily. And Albus. But mostly Lily." Dom rubbed her forehead. "And her potion is a bitch. Never go in for one of her experiments, Malfoy. They usually end badly."

"You're telling me." He yawned, his arms stretching back. Dominique's eyes tracked the way his hands twisted together overhead. She'd never noticed his hands before. They were nice—big and nice.

"I am. I've currently got a headache from one of them, so I have every right to tell you. When have you ever taken one of her potions?"

"I've taken a few of them."

"Oh?" Dominique sat up, her interest in his hands mostly forgotten. Or pushed to the back of her messed up mind, at the very least.

"Yeah. That's why Georgie stopped seeing me. Lily gave me one of those potions a few weeks ago, before a party. It was supposed to be a Cheering Solution—I was a bit down about something that happened when I visited my grandparents—but all it did was make the whole world seem sort of...shaky. Like whatever I did wasn't really happening. Which isn't really a good way to be in a normal place, where you can just sit still. But I was making an arse of myself and I embarrassed Georgie and why the fuck am I telling _you_ this?"

Dominique blinked. "Because you don't want to clean the kitchen. And neither do I."

"Not a good enough reason." Scorpius swung himself up out of the chair and turned to the doorway into the next room and Dominique sighed.

"You'll reconsider when you see what's growing on their dishes," she called, but Scorpius didn't reappear, although she did hear cursing over the sound of water running from the faucet.

She joined him in the kitchen a few minutes later, and they worked in silence, throwing a barrage of swear words out into the spell-buzzed air every once in a while.

They collapsed at the table—still coated in papers and magazines—after the dishes had been put away and the rubbish emptied in the dumpsters in the alley outside and Dominique pressed her face against the newspaper, not minding if she got tattooed with newsprint because she was just exhausted.

Scorpius interrupted her coma; in a voice that sounded much more energetic and Dominique felt, he said, "So, I've shared some stuff with you."

"I won't tell anyone," Dominique said to the newspaper.

"I'm not concerned about you telling anyone—Lily's probably already told everyone who matters." Dominique considered this. It was true. "I just mean, it's not fair."

"What isn't?" The paper was actually quite comfortable. She wouldn't have minded staying there for a while.

"That I've shared something personal with you but you haven't shared anything with me."

Dominique wanted to point out that this was not the purpose of social interaction, that being honest with people wasn't a game, wasn't a competition where they could settle the score. But she was too tired so she mumbled, "Fine, ask me something, then."

"Why'd you want to dye your hair yesterday? Why'd you quit your job?"

She pushed herself up from the table and looked at him. His grey eyes burnt against hers with curiosity, and she wondered what he'd do if she cursed him.

But he had shared some personal stuff with her, and so she answered him. "My boss wanted me to turn the Veela charm on while trying to coerce the jury into letting our guy go free. I told him I wouldn't, that I'd just be the kickass lawyer I am and it would all go all right, and he told me that I should use whatever talents I have. So I told him he should go fuck himself and that I was finished. And then I guess I came here."

Scorpius looked taken aback for a second, and then he smirked. "'Veela charm?' I don't believe you have _any_ charm, Weasley, Veela or otherwise."

Dominique rolled her lips together and thought. She hadn't done this in a while, not since Hogwarts and the few years after, when her social life kept her going, before she found (short-lived) meaning in her job. But that didn't mean that she couldn't still do it. She was part-Veela, after all. There had been a two year stretch when she hadn't bought herself a drink once—susceptible blokes had fought each other to ply her with alcohol.

She straightened her back and met Scorpius's eyes with hers. His widened in surprise and she felt tendrils of _something_—she'd never tried to name it—burning through her veins, running up her nerve endings, hazing up around her skin. Scorpius's eyes didn't leave her—now they were skimming down her body, taking her all in, and she thought about his hands, because it always worked best if she could be mildly attracted to the bloke, and then her vision was tunnelling, blacking out everything but Malfoy, everything but his hands clenched on the table and his narrow torso and his wide shoulders and the way he was leaning toward her—because she had cast her net on him, him alone, and she was magnetic. He was steel. He was close, close enough for her lips to burn him, close enough for her tongue to claim him, close enough for everything to change.

The crash of the door flying open in the living room shocked her, and Dominique blinked, collapsed back onto the table and severed the spell. Malfoy sighed and then said, "Fuck," and then Lily was there, an electric presence on the edge of the kitchen.

"Hey, guys!" She spoke too loudly. Dom's head ached. "Wow, you did magnificently. But where're the hors d'oeuvres?"

"Merlin, Lil, it's bad enough you made them clean the flat. We can just order in." Albus's voice didn't hurt Dominique as much, and she thought that she had maybe never appreciated him quite as much.

"No, it's fine." Scorpius sounded sort of vague—like he was thinking of something far, far away. "It's fine. I don't mind making the hors d'oeuvres. Cleaning just took a long time." He came back to himself enough to add, "Because you are both despicable, foul human beings and really ought to be locked in an institution until you can learn to clean up after yourselves."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Lily said, dropping her bag on the counter with a noise that sounded like a thousand bottles clattering against each other. "Are you all right, Dom? I brought you something to wear."

Dominique resurrected herself enough from the migraine to take the bag Lily was offering and slip back into her youngest cousin's tornado-struck bedroom. She didn't know why her head felt like hell. Maybe it was a combination of her emotions over the past day and the potion Lily had fed her the night before _and_ the creature magic involved in exuding that much Veela magnetism. She tugged Lily's shirt over her head and unclasped her bra, slipping the shorts over her hips and crossing the room to the bathroom, where she ran hot water and sat in the bathtub as it steamed around and over her, burning her skin red and distracting her from the pain in her head. But not from the possibility that this might not have been a symptom of any of that; it may have been a symptom of the emotions she'd felt crashing over her when she'd thought Scorpius was going to kiss her. Because even in that altered state, she should have wanted to pull away from him. She usually wanted to be above the blokes she captured, too good for them, better than them. But that hadn't happened with Scorpius.

She scrubbed at her skin and rubbed her hands through her hair, lathering it with too much of Lily's kiwi-scented shampoo, letting the suds and the day-old scum whirl down the drain in a waterspout as she wrapped a towel around her hair and reached for the bag Lily had handed her.

She tugged out a horrible dress. Well, actually, the dress itself wasn't horrible. It was deep purple and clung just above her knees, it fit perfectly and she'd only worn it once. But she didn't want to look attractive after what had almost happened. Tonight she wanted to be the Weasley everyone overlooked.

Dominique tore Lily's room apart, but she found nothing that would fit her any better than the clothes she had been wearing earlier, which clearly would not do the trick. She had never mastered any alteration charms, and besides, it was impossible to add fabric out of thin air, and stretching the clothes would have rendered them see-through. After a half-hour of fruitless searching (during which she did discover quite an impressive stock of illegal ingredients and a fascinating pile of letters in messy handwriting) she resigned herself to wearing the dress.

She slipped it over her head and pulled her hair back in a messy damp ponytail, glanced at herself in the mirror and scowled, easing lines into her forehead and around her mouth, and then escaped the clutter of Lily's bedroom for the now-clean living room, where Albus and Lily were setting up a makeshift bar on the coffee table.

"Ah, darling, you look smashing," Lily said, glancing up from the glistening multi-coloured bottles she was arranging according to height. It was amazing how Lily's aesthetic senses extended to alcohol and fashion, but were lost on anything and everything else.

"Whatever. What time is everyone getting here?"

"Soon," Albus replied, setting a stack of Dixie cups at one end of the table. "Scorpius," he called over his shoulder, "do you need Dom's help with hors d'oeuvres?"

"Nope, all set," Scorpius called back, and Dom let out a barely perceptible sigh of relief. Maybe when her family and their friends crowded the place she could ignore Scorpius.

It didn't happen that way, though. This was Dominique's life, and it had never been charmed. Lily put Dominique and Scorpius on bar duty until midnight, and she spent the early hours of the night not looking at Scorpius, not noticing his hands and the way they looked on the narrow necks of jewel-coloured bottles, not accidentally brushing against him when she reached for a mixer on the other side of the table. She ignored him determinedly.

At midnight, when Teddy and Lysander replaced Dominique and Scorpius, Dominique escaped to Lily and Albus's balcony, looking at the glow of London and holding a dripping glass of rosy pink something that emanated fumes of alcohol and Dom could feel herself getting lightheaded just by breathing. She leaned over the railing and looked down to four storeys below where cars flickered with red brake lights on the motorway and everything looked small and insignificant.

"Hey." Scorpius took up all the empty space on the balcony, his hands close beside hers on the railing and all the energy she'd felt before, when he'd almost kissed her, blurring the lines of where he ended, where his skin was separated from hers.

"Malfoy," she replied. Not with any real inflection, just a neutral recognition of him being there, breathing her air and sharing her view.

"When I said that thing about you not having charm," he wasn't wasting any time, "I didn't need you to prove to me that you do."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I was just joking. You're always charming, Weasley."

She rolled her eyes. How horribly cheesy he sounded. "But never like that," she pointed out.

He was silent, his fingers tightening around the railing. "No. No, never like that." And then he couldn't seem to stop talking, "That was terrifying though. You didn't even seem like _you_ anymore. And I don't mean that as an insult because I've always found you...I've always found you incandescent. Most of all when you're not treating yourself like a magnet." He shook his head. "Like right now. Right now you want me to go away, to take back everything that I've said, and right now is one of those moments where I can barely look at you because you are so beautiful."

She shook her head. He was too open, too honest, too un-Malfoy and un-Slytherin. But she couldn't stop herself as she angled her face and moved closer to him. What was she doing? He was twenty-one to her twenty-four and he had fucked around more than she ever had and he was Albus's best friend and Lily's occasional sidekick and she wasn't even positive he was good in bed.

He caught her lips with his and his hands slid down her dress to her waist. She dropped her drink over the edge of the balcony and wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing against him until they were only separated by layers of cloth—no space, no air.

Dominique pushed him back so they were out of view from the windows, with Scorpius up against the brick wall of the building, Dominique up against him, and the city skyline dark behind her but they didn't see that, didn't notice anything but the newness of their mouths.

Judging from this kiss, Dominique thought in one of the very few seconds that she had to think, judging from this kiss, Malfoy would be _very_ good in bed. So she took his hand in hers and led him back through the room, where the party was beginning to descend into something resembling a mosh-pit. She ignored Lily's whistle as she and Scorpius wound their way through the room to Lily's bedroom, and across the mess on her floor to her bathroom, where Dominique dropped her dress and her panties on the floor and let Scorpius have his way with her bra as she worked at his shirt and the zipper on his jeans.

They were in the shower and the water steamed in the air around them. Dominique's voice whispered against his ear, "This doesn't have to mean anything."

"No." His lips were hot, his breath hazy in the humid air. Diamonds of water fell on them and he added, "But it could," as they fell together.

"It could," Dominique agreed.

She thought it might.

**A/N:** I really hope this wasn't horrible. I feel out of practice.  
>(As always, I appreciate reviews!)<p> 


	4. lily luna and lorcan

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Harry Potter_

Pairing: Lily Luna Potter + Lorcan Scamander  
><span>For<span>: sparklylulz  
><span>Prompt<span>: "Twilight" – Thriving Ivory

:::  
><span>only the loneliest<span>  
>show me what it looks like<br>outside your window at twilight  
><span>thriving ivory<span> : twilight

Lily helped Lorcan pack. The process wasn't sad—boxing up his figurines and duvet and pillows and cutlery and notebooks didn't mean that _he_ was leaving, it just meant that his stuff was. And given the chocolate smears on his duvet and the tarnish on his forks, Lily thought that was probably a good thing.

He handed her a stack of cardboard and sent her into the second bedroom of his flat, which he'd turned into a library, and only then, when she'd started pulling his books from the shelves, did she realise it was over. Over was a dreadfully final word, but Lorcan's books were leaving London and he would accompany them. She wondered if he'd stay if she stole his library, snuck it into her bedroom in her parents' home and cast so many curses over the boxes that he wouldn't be able to rescue them.

Lily had always loved his library. He kept books there that weren't supposed to exist—books with dark tendrils of spells leaking from the pages; some stained with greasy potions, others with blackish blood; some had moving diagrams of animals attacking each other and some had full colour photographs of people burning against each other in lust—it was a collection of forbidden texts.

Books like these tied Lily and Lorcan together. In the fall of her first year, Lily had been fascinated by the library's Restricted Section. She had decided to read all of the books on its shelves by the time she left Hogwarts. She had snuck into the library one night in October, cast a Silencing Charm on the first book on the first shelf of the Restricted Section, flipped to its first page, and dropped it as a scream ripped through the library. She hadn't been able to hear out of her right ear for three weeks.

Lily had not given up, though. After serving her week of detention she had begun lingering around the Restricted Section, watching older students with signed passes wander among its shelves, looking for specific texts. And then she saw blond and lanky Lorcan Scamander duck behind the first shelf, and she grinned. She knew Lorcan, sort of, because his mum was her godmother.

She'd walked up to him and whispered, "What're you looking for?"

"A book, Lily Potter." He hadn't lifted his eyes from the line of cloth-bound spines.

"About what?" Lily could feel the forbidden books humming—a siren song for the curious.

"Something you shouldn't know about."

"Come _on_, Lorcan. I can handle it."

He'd raised his eyebrows at her, lifted a book from the shelf, flipped to a page somewhere near the end, and passed it to her. She looked down at a diagram of how to dissect a human body using magic. Lily had barely kept her lips from twisting in disgust. She'd stared at the horrible images on the page until her vision clouded, and then she'd blinked, read through the accompanying descriptive text, and handed the book back to Lorcan entirely composed.

He'd looked impressed. "Maybe you can handle it. What is it you'd like, Potter?"

"I've decided to read every book in here by the end of seventh year."

Lorcan looked around at the shelves. "Is that even possible?"

"It better be. But no one will give me permission until I'm at least a third year. Can you help me?"

"What, like steal books for you? I don't think that'll work, Potter."

"Why not? We could meet once a week and make a trade." Lorcan had looked at her, grey eyes cautious. "It'd be easy."

He hadn't said anything.

"Break a few rules, Lorcan," Lily had needled, and then he'd nodded.

"All right, yeah. Let's meet on the Astronomy Tower on Thursday nights. I'll bring two books a week."

"Brilliant!" Lily'd stood on tiptoe and kissed him lightly on the cheek before turning and disappearing out the door to the library.

She had read all the books in the Restricted Section before she left. The night she finished, in April of her seventh year, she sent Lorcan an owl and he had Apparated to Hogsmeade, where they'd had a celebratory drink. They'd both gone home sober and happy.

Their friendship hadn't changed much, in the time between Lily's first year foray into rule-breaking and the day she packed his library into boxes. Lorcan loved Lily because she was different—her fascination with dirty and unsavoury literature only scratched the surface of her darkly intricate nature—and Lily loved Lorcan because he found her intriguing, rather than strange.

Lorcan came into his library to find Lily sitting on the floor, her legs curled beneath her, a stack of books beside her, and empty boxes all around. "What's up, Lil? I do need to take my books with me, you know."

She didn't look up from the book in her lap, a history of the United Kingdom according to the goblin race.

"Lil?" Lorcan asked, pushing aside a pile of books so he could kneel next to her. "Are you all right?"

"It's just," Lily finally looked at him and she was biting her lip, "you're taking all your books with you."

Lorcan rolled his eyes. "You could buy your own, you know."

"I move too often for a library like this." In the three years since her seventh year she'd lived with Hugo until he moved in with Ris and then Albus until he moved in with Scorpius and then James until he'd kicked her out and then Sebastian Nott until they'd broken up and then Rose until Rose had started bringing blokes home every night and then Lily had tried living with Louis but that hadn't even lasted a week before she was back in her parents' house, looking for a flat to let on her salary as a freelance writer. Which meant that she couldn't afford much more than a cardboard box beneath a bridge.

"True." Lorcan shrugged. "Well, you can always Floo me to borrow some. It's not like Scotland is far away."

Lily's nails bit into the skin of her right wrist. "Lorcan, you are moving to _Eriskay_. Eriskay is tiny and an island and barely Scotland."

"I know where it is, Lily."

"Then you understand why I'm sad."

He was silent for a moment, playing with the green and blue string bracelet around his left wrist. Lily had given it to him in second year, and it was beginning to look rather ragged. She wondered if he'd snip it off sometime after he left. Maybe he would want to start his new life over without any reminders of the crazy girl he'd left behind.

"Is it just the books you're going to miss?" he asked, keeping his eyes down.

"Of course not, you idiot. But at least _you_ can write to me. Your books can't, and I can't just hop over and interrupt your research on the Hebridean Blacks whenever I feel like reading a certain passage."

"You could," Lorcan told her.

Lily grinned at him. "You're nice, but you won't think that once you're settled with your dragons and Gaelic-speaking friends."

Lorcan looked like he wanted to hug her, so she hopped up from the floor and dropped the book she'd been holding into the box. "There, I've begun. I'll go get us takeaway for dinner, all right? I'll help you finish when I get back."

He didn't say anything, but he also didn't stop her, so she went out into London, in search of a takeaway place far enough away for her to compose herself on the walk.

After their dinner of Thai takeaway, they packed Lorcan's books. Two days later he was gone and Lily was lonelier than she'd been since she was eleven.

Lorcan had hidden a book under her bed, which she didn't find until six weeks after he'd left, when she was clearing out her bedroom to move into her new flat on the outskirts of London. She would be sharing with a stranger, but it was better than staying in her childhood home until she died.

The book was lying on its cover beneath a tangle of stockings and jumpers. Lily pulled it out from beneath her bed and looked at it for a long moment. _A Collection of Creepy Stories._ The title stank of a poorly edited children's book, intended for campfires and slumber parties. But when Lily flipped to the first page she found an ink illustration that would never have appeared in any children's books, unless the children were hags. It was of a heart, black and throbbing with inky blood.

Lily turned back to the front cover and found an inscription written in Lorcan's elegant script: _To Lily, We'll always have the Restricted Section. _

She wiped her suddenly damp cheeks with the back of her hand and held the book tight to her chest. Trust Lorcan to make her heart hurt after she thought she'd finished missing him.

Some time later she stood and placed the book in a box, picked it up, and walked out into her parents' living room. They were sitting on the sofa, Ginny curled up against Harry's side, each reading a section of the paper. Harry looked up when he heard Lily, and he smiled at her.

"All ready for the big move?"

"Just about." She glanced behind her, at the boxes spread across the floor of her childhood bedroom. "Hopefully this is the last time I'm moving out of here."

Ginny unfolded herself from the couch and came over, leaning her head against her daughter's. "You know we love it when you're home, Lil."

"Of course. Just it's better when it's not an extended stay," Lily replied, smiling. She moved toward the fire and her mother tossed Floo powder into the flames for her. "See you in a few," Lily said as she stepped into the fireplace with her box of books.

Her new flat was small and her bedroom consisted of a desk, a twin bed, a window, and about two square feet of floor space, but Lily thought she could grow to love it. Her flatmate was named Pedro, he was a few years older than her, had gone to school on the Continent, and worked for the Ministry. They had a wine-fuelled dinner her first night in the flat, after which he flipped on the radio and took her hands.

"Here are things that I know about you: your name is Lily Potter; you like pasta and red wine; and you laugh a lot." He told her, when they stood facing each other in the small space between the sofa and the arm chair in the living room. The music wove around them and Lily felt red wine loosening her limbs.

"All true."

He grinned, inclining his head. "It is your turn. What do you know about me?"

She felt like she was back in first year, playing name games with the other students. "Your name is Pedro Valentino, you play the guitar, and you do not often read."

He blinked. "How do you know I play guitar?"

Lily flipped his hands over so his palms were facing up. "Calluses. And I know you don't read a lot because I haven't seen one book around the flat; although I haven't been in your bedroom, obviously. You may have a stash there."

"I don't." He shook his head. "I've got another on you, then. You're insightful."

She let go of his hands. "I'm observant. I think we'll get along well."

"Probably." He stepped back. "Just one rule: cast silencing charms if you have anyone over. I will, too, obviously."

Lily didn't tell him that it was unlikely that any bloke would find his way to her bed. "Sure thing."

He grinned. "We'll get on famously, then."

She nodded and turned, disappearing to her bedroom and book, reading disturbing stories until she drifted off into monochrome dreams that did nothing to improve her melancholy mood.

Her days consisted of writing and wandering London and occasionally meeting her cousins for coffee or drinks. By October she had read _Creepy Stories_ seven times and had written twenty letters to Lorcan. She'd received thirteen from him, which was surprising considering that it was Lorcan and he usually sucked at writing letters.

Lily had her book. She had her cousins and Lorcan's letters and her writing. There was her city, beckoning at three in the morning just as it did at six at night and she liked her flatmate. But she still fell asleep and woke up feeling sad. Sometimes she dreamt of Lorcan—memories of Hogwarts or days spent in London, or strange, overwrought dreams of things that hadn't happen or could never happen: the two of them flinging each other through the air beneath a striped circus tent; Lorcan running to Lily along the seabed, trailing glittering fish scales behind him; Lily blowing bubbles in a river until Lorcan grew out of them, transparent and glistening and dispersing when she sighed at the sight of him—and she woke up lonely and missing him. Other nights she was alone in her dreams, and didn't think of him once, and was hit with the force of remembering him when her alarm went off, left with the taste of sorrow in her mouth at the realisation that she could forget him, even if the forgetting was temporary.

She received a letter from him on Halloween. It was still early when the owl alighted at her window, and she untied the letter from his leg and fed him a stale treat before he winged off to the Hebrides. She slit the envelope.

_Dear Lily,_

_Yesterday I hiked up a mountain and I sat on a peak and looked out over the ocean—south, toward you. There were a few wild ponies grazing nearby and one of them had these blue eyes and I think if you were here you would have made him fall in love with you. You probably would have whispered poems about ribs and violets and the line of his spine into his furry ears and then you'd have been galloping off down the other side without one backward glance at me. But even though you'd have left me, I still wish you had been here on the mountain yesterday._

_I also saw a Hebridean Black, but that's expected. I've told you about them before, I know, but I wish that I could show one to you. I think you would probably love them, more than you'd love the ponies, even. They're dangerous and bitter creatures, and their eyes burn harsher than their breaths do, but they're also fantastically beautiful. One of the girls here found an egg a few years back, and she kept it in her fire until it hatched, and kept it alive long enough for it to go free. She has burn marks all up and down her arms, and sometimes that dragon lands among her cattle and leaves claw marks in the earth, but it never eats her cows. So they have some sort of awareness, if not complete sentience. My book is coming along, although I've sent Lysander the first chapter and he tells me it's too subjective. It must be more scientific, he says. I don't know, Lil, I think there's something more to dragons than mere science. I just wish I could get it down on paper._

_It's almost Halloween. Up here we're drinking whisky and dancing—I hope you go out and have a good time in London. Remember last year, when we all went to the Leaky and got so drunk that you and I ended up taking the tube in the wrong direction and walked home and scared all those Muggle kids running around in costumes? Make this year as good as last, and don't miss me too much._

_I'll be missing you enough for the both of us._

_Lorcan_

Lily sighed and set the letter on her desk. She placed her hands flat on the surface and looked down at them, pale against the dark wood. She wanted Lorcan badly. She thought that somewhere in the four months between his leaving and that day she should have been able to adjust, to find a new best friend, to cling to Hugo a little tighter, or Ris. But all Lily wanted was to know what Lorcan saw every day, to know these people he had met and see his wild ponies. She wanted to feel the burn of a Hebridean Black's fire or its eyes if that meant she was with Lorcan. She wanted to know where he sat when he wrote letters to her, whether the view from his bedroom window consisted of the ocean or the mountains or just trees and a dirt path—what it looked like at dawn and twilight and one in the morning. She wondered whether it rained more there than it did in London and whether she would ever know.

It would have been easy to Floo him. It wasn't even international travel. But she knew if she saw him again, she might not be able to leave him. It might be harder to come back to London without him than to stay here without him.

She took Lorcan's advice and went out that night. She and Hugo and Ris and Albus and Scorpius and Georgie Nott all went to a Muggle club, one with flashing lights and turning disco balls and drinks flowing fast. Lily lost herself in quick bursts of alcohol, and soon found her way into a crowd that didn't know her, her body twisting against men dressed as Frankenstein and pirates and Peter Pan, until a hobo left his hands on her waist for longer than two songs.

"I'm Jeffrey," he told her over the music.

"Lil," she shouted back.

"Are you here alone?" Jeffrey had big hands and brown hair, and his nose was a little too long but otherwise he looked nice in the coloured lights running over them, turning his fingers green where they met the skin beneath her silver top and his hair blue where it fell across his forehead.

"I have friends."

"Of course," Jeffrey rushed, "I meant, are you here with a guy?"

No guy. No Lorcan. No one for a long time. Lily pushed forward and kissed the stranger. He seemed shocked for barely a second, and then he kissed her back, deepening it effortlessly, so his tongue ran along her mouth and his teeth grazed her lips lightly.

She pressed against him, feeling the length of his body on the length of hers, and with her eyes closed she could imagine that Jeffrey's lankiness was actually Lorcan's. The hands pressing against the skin of her back could have been Lorcan's, although he would never press that deep. The lips bruising hers were chapped like his always were in the winter.

But Lily didn't really know whether all of these pieces of Jeffrey could have been Lorcan. She didn't know whether his lips felt soft or hard or somewhere in between when he kissed. If he bit and tugged and nipped like Jeffrey or if he was gentler, slower. If Lorcan's fingers drifted and skimmed over skin, or if they walked, leaving marks behind them. If his body tensed or relaxed into the touching.

She didn't know why she was missing Lorcan then, when she had another man on her. She should have been interested in this Jeffrey, should have been running her hands over his back, searching for a way to his skin. But she was thinking too much, and all of those thoughts ran straight to Lorcan.

Not just to him, to the man who was her best friend and his smile and his eyes and his voice when they were arguing over some book or some theory—she was thinking of his body and his tongue and she wanted to be touching him.

Jeffrey's hands had become too insistent at the waist of her jeans and she jerked away from him. "Sorry," she muttered. "I can't."

Lily weaved her way out of the crowd, to the door, and out onto the street without looking back at him. She stood in the cool mist outside while people passed her in costumes—girls like whores and guys like D-List Muggle film stars.

She wondered how to get to Scotland. Would she splinch herself if she Apparated? Would the Floo let her out into Lorcan's cottage? Would she make a fool of herself if she made it to him?

Deciding that her cousins would assume she'd gone home with someone, Lily started off in the direction of the nearest tube stop. She could get home and into her fireplace before Pedro returned from his Halloween party.

But the light was on in the living room when she stumbled through the front door. Pedro was stretched out on the sofa, a pillow covering his face.

"Hi, Lil," he mumbled through the cloth.

She walked past him to the fireplace and grabbed a pinch of Floo Powder from the tin on the mantelpiece. "Bye, Pedro."

He groaned as the fire whooshed around her and then she heard only flames for what felt like hours—she'd never travelled this far by Floo before—and then she fell out onto a wood floor.

It was colder here. She got to her feet and looked around at the empty kitchen—the counters were pine and the table was cluttered with familiar dishes. It was sort of like she'd imagined it.

She could tell that Lorcan wasn't there. He was probably out drinking whisky with his mates, like he said he'd be in his letter. She could have gone wandering out into the night to look for him, but she decided it might be wiser to wait for him. After all, he had to come home sooner or later.

The fire burnt out behind her and the house went dark; she ran her hands along the wall until she bumped against a light switch by the window over the sink. She flicked it and followed the illuminated staircase to the small second storey. The first room was a bathroom, the second Lorcan's bedroom, and the third the library. She left the lights on in all three rooms, lingered over the books in the library for a moment before tugging _Fearsome Spells and Wretched Potions_ from its place on the second shelf and held it tight in shaking hands as she headed into Lorcan's bedroom.

She slipped her silver heels from her feet and tugged her jeans down over her waist, leaving them tangled on the floor with her shoes. She searched Lorcan's wardrobe and found an old pair of tartan pyjama bottoms, which she pulled on before crawling beneath his old chocolate-stained duvet. She curled against his pillow, inhaled, and began reading.

Lily fell asleep and when she woke up it was to a voice calling, "Hello?" up the staircase. She stretched and opened her mouth to respond, to tell Lorcan to stop being an idiot and get in here because she had something important to tell him, when he burst through the open doorway with his wand held out like he was going to curse her. He froze with it directed at her heart and after a shocked and silent instant began laughing.

"Lily?" he breathed through the hiccups. "What the fuck are you doing here?"

"I missed you and I was drunk," she explained. "Coming here seemed like a good idea."

He grinned and finished moving across the room to his bed. He collapsed beside her and pulled her into a hug. She pressed her cheek against his shoulder and breathed. He smelled like whisky and cold air and sweat and his pillow.

"I missed you, too," he said against her hair. "But you smell like a distillery."

"So do you," she pointed out.

"True." He pulled away from her and smoothed her hair away from her face, his fingertips light on her skin. "It's so good to see you."

"You look like a mountain man," she told him. He hadn't shaved in at least a week, and a blond beard scratched against her fingers when she touched his face. "It suits you."

"Cheers." He smiled. The book she'd been reading had fallen between them, and was digging into Lorcan's side. He lifted it and read the cover. "You just came for the books," he accused.

Lily knew he was joking, but she also wanted him to know that he meant more to her than all the books on the shelves of his library and all the books in the Restricted Section and possibly all the books in the world, although thinking that may have been sacrilege. But he also _was_ all those books to her, they—the two of them—belonged to the books. "Lorcan," she began. "London isn't anything without you."

"Come on, Lil, you've always loved the city." He moved so that he was leaning against his headboard beside her, his arm over her shoulders and his head tilted so it pressed against hers. She leaned into him and sighed.

"You've always been there," she told him. "I don't like it as much without you."

"You have Ris and Hugo and Louis and everyone, though. You're not alone." He squeezed her shoulders and she dropped her hand to his thigh, her freckled fingers still on his jeans.

"I'm not," she agreed. Lorcan was. She knew it had been hard for him, in the beginning, before he met people. But he seemed settled now. More settled than she felt, always travelling in lonesome circles. Lonely despite the consistency of her friends, despite the familiarity of her city.

"So you miss me, I miss you, but you're still _home_, Lil."

She shook her head. "No."

"No?"

Her fingers were moving over his jeans. She couldn't help herself, she just wanted to be as close to him as possible. She wanted him to want her.

"Lily?"

She turned so her lips were centimetres from his cheek. "Please," she murmured. "Please don't make me leave you."

He froze. She didn't even think he breathed for a few heartbreaking seconds. Then he asked, "What are you doing?"

She lifted her hand from his jeans to his scruffy chin, turning his face so his nose bumped against hers. His lips were parted slightly and they looked chapped and she didn't hesitate before she kissed him.

He did not kiss her back.

Her cheeks were red with shame before she'd even pulled away completely.

"You just miss me, Lily." His voice was steady, but she could swear his breathing was faster than normal. "You don't want me. You just miss me."

Maybe he was right. Maybe she could nod and they could hug and forget her little overstepping of the boundaries. But she thought about that Muggle's kiss and his hands and she thought about herself and her loneliness and the way she missed him. She couldn't accept his reasoning. "No. I don't _just_ miss you. You are one person, Lorcan. One person, when you're there. But when you're gone the space you make—the absence of you—is huge. It covers everything. I'm with Al or Ris or Hugo and I miss you. I'm writing and I miss you. I'm snogging some bloke and I miss you. I'm asleepand my dreams tell me I miss you. I wake up and I ache for you. Everything, Lorcan. Everything in my life is changed with you gone."

"So you'd give up your whole life, come up and stay here with me in the middle of nowhere? What would you do, Lily? You're fire and passion and action. You'd be bored in a day, you'd struggle and break promises and leave. It's better the way it is."

"Do you really think that little of me?" She moved to sit cross-legged at the foot of his bed.

"No. I think that much of you. You belong somewhere bigger than this. This place and I, we're not enough to hold you."

She shook her head. "I don't need to be held. I _want_ to be here. I choose to be here. Don't you see, Lorcan? My life is movable. My career isn't tied to any place. I'm not tied to any place. I'm only tied to you." He looked about to argue. "Stop thinking you're not enough because you are. Stop thinking I'm only about the leaving. I've left everyone else but I've never even thought about leaving you. When you're around I only want to stay. I want wild ponies and black dragons with bright eyes and a nowhere place."

"Lily Potter," Lorcan said. "You cannot know how boring it gets here."

"You haven't said you don't love me yet."

He parted his lips. Her heart seized. "I can't say that." Her heart burst again. "But," he began.

"But nothing. If you love me, Lorcan, then I won't be bored. Because if you love me then you'll let me kiss you every day. And maybe you'll let me do more. And sometime I'll cook dinner and make a mess of the kitchen. And some other time we'll go skinny dipping in the sea. Tomorrow we'll go fishing, the next day we'll ride wild ponies down a mountain. In a week we'll have a picnic and feed the seagulls and in three days I'll meet a dragon and you'll get all its enigmas down in words." She crawled closer to him. "Please let me have all of that. Please don't lose me again. Let me stay here and write here and love you here." She was in his lap, her legs around his waist, her knees pressed against his sides. "Please let me be here."

"Lil," he breathed. "I do love you."

He kissed harder than she'd imagined he would. He didn't bite the way Jeffrey had, but his lips were rough against hers and he drew her toward him with his mouth. His hands were softer on her waist, though, slipping light and tantalizing over her skin.

"That's a yes, then?" she asked, when he moved his lips along her jaw line and she'd caught her breath.

"Yes," he kissed into her neck.

Later Lorcan fell asleep with his arm tight around her waist, his fingers burning against the skin of her hip. Lily drifted and in her dreams she was with him and when she woke up she pressed her lips against his bare collarbone. She kissed up along his neck and over his cheek and curled her lips around his earlobe. His hands refastened on her hips and he told her, "Good morning."

"Guess what," she breathed against his ear.

"What?"

She shifted so she was straddling him, and his eyes were everywhere at once. His thumbs rubbed circles against her skin and her fingertips were playing across his chest.

"I'm staying."

He sat up, his hands flat on her back, his face buried in her red hair, his teeth light on her shoulder. "For good."

"Forever. For me and for you and for your books."

He chuckled. "Mostly me, though."

"Mostly you." She pushed against his shoulders. "Lie down, Lorcan. We're not getting up just yet."

They stayed in the cottage all day, but on the second of November he showed her a dragon and on the fifth he took her to the ocean and on the seventh they sent books to the floor of the library. On the nineteenth she rode a pony down the mountainside but Lily never left Lorcan behind.

**A/N:** This feels heavy, and I don't know what I think about it now, but I loved writing it.  
>I appreciate all kinds of reviews!<p> 


	5. lysander and dominique

**Disclaimer: **I do not own _Harry _Potter.

Pairing: Dominique Weasley + Lysander Scamander  
><span>For<span>: Anonymous

:::

vulnerable kings and queens

Dominique found the ruin sometime between her first year and her first kiss.

Her first year had gone the way she'd always thought it would. She had been sorted into Gryffindor, had made two close friends and too many acquaintances, had bitched her way to one Slytherin enemy, and had passed all of her classes. She had broken a few rules and toed the line for even more, and she had won the hearts of all of her professors, except for the headmaster, who considered her a bit of a spoiled brat.

Her first kiss had been unexpected. It had happened weeks after her thirteenth birthday, in the summer before Victoire's sixth year and Dominique's third. Victoire's mate Wesley had found her down by the water, he'd grabbed Dom's hand and told her he thought she was the prettiest girl in the world, and he'd mashed his skin against hers, his mouth wet and hot and tasting of Firewhiskey. Dominique had exploded out of herself, or imploded in on herself, and when she'd opened her eyes she'd been standing in the exact centre of the ruins she'd found when wandering outside the Hogwarts walls sometime the year before or the year before that. Her stress-induced Apparation had landed her between three-foot-high stone walls and the intricate remains of window frames. She hadn't been back to the ruins since she'd first found them, but somehow Dom had landed there out of everywhere on the dark map of places she'd been.

When she was thirteen, a recent victim of unwanted kissing and uncontrolled Apparation, Dominique had just wanted to get home. She hadn't cared about the beauty of the twice-discovered stone ruins, hadn't given a damn about the crumbled walls all around her. She had wanted to crawl beneath her covers, to cuddle with the stuffed dragon her Uncle Charlie gave her for her second birthday and forget about the taste of Firewhiskey on lips and the way rough skin felt against her face.

She'd stumbled through the forest until she found the path to Hogsmeade. She made it to the Three Broomsticks and finally Flooed home, falling out of the fireplace in her living room, in the middle of Victoire's friends' third round of Exploding Snap-turned-drinking game. Victoire had asked, "Do you want to join, Dom?" even though she must have known that Dominique would rather have thrown herself into the freezing North Sea. Dom shook her head and stepped on Wesley's hands as she skirted the circle.

She'd pressed the lock on her bedroom door and curled up on her bed, pressing her dragon against her face and inhaling the scent of musty fabric. She had felt both alive and empty.

Ten minute later Dominique had written a note to Fred: _Hi! I just Apparated and a douche kissed me. Not necessarily in that order. Can I stay with you until school starts again? Mum and Dad are still in France and Vic is going to be partying until forever and Louis is with Lily and James and Al._

_Please? Tell Uncle George I'll behave._

_Dom_

And fifty-five minutes after that she and her trunk and her owl were all in Fred's family's living room, and Fred was begging her for details and they were laughing about what an idiot Wesley was and Dom forgot about feeling empty and started acting happy.

But sometime later, during third year, she found herself at the ruins again. She had left the grounds because Quidditch practise had been rubbish and she didn't want to write a paper for Potions, and her wandering took her back to them. She sat down in the tangle of weeds and stones weathered to dust and thought.

After that she went to the ruins to do homework or relax or avoid her friends and their drama; she fell for the shadows of light that angled down through the trees and the shimmer of mica in the remnants of the walls; she loved the dandelions and violets that bloomed where the floor used to be. It all made her feel far away and also linked to something bigger than herself or Hogwarts or her family.

Dominique found out what the walls had once been in fifth year Muggle Studies, when they did a course on Muggle religion and Professor Taylor showed them old photographs of chapels across Britain. Dom recognised the stones and the window frames, and she felt a little strange to know that her sanctuary had once belonged to Muggles. Not strange in a bad way, not really, but odd because she had never felt so intense a connection to Muggles before.

By her sixth year, Dom sometimes spent whole weekends out in the woods, setting up a small tent in the centre of the once-chapel, exactly where she'd Apparated, that first time. Sleeping in her ruins always seemed like a good idea, until the day after, when bruises purpled her back and her legs cramped at the very thought of sitting on stones. But she still did it, because sometimes peace from the chatter of her friends and the constant burden of homework and Quidditch was worth the pain.

One Sunday, after she'd spent Friday and Saturday nights in the roofless ruins, beneath the faraway stars, she came back to Hogwarts and collapsed into her bed, relishing in the softness of her mattress against the ache that spread from her shoulders to her hips.

Fred banged into the sixth year girls' dormitory and dropped to lie at Dom's feet, shaking her awake.

"Hey, bitch. I've been looking for you everywhere, for ages. You really need to stop disappearing. I need a favour."

Dominique pulled her duvet over her head. "No."

"I haven't even asked yet!" Fred grabbed onto her foot, where it peeked from beneath her covers. His hand was cold. "I could be asking if you'd allow me the honour to write your Defence essay for you."

"Bullocks. You're going to ask me to do something obnoxious and ridiculously stupid."

"Come on, Dom. It's not that bad."

"Okay." Dominique sat up and faced her cousin, rubbing sleep from her eyes. "Tell me what it is, then."

"You know I've been wanting to take Jasmine out for years." Dominique nodded. Fred had been in love with his best friend since they met just before the Sorting, when Jas was tossed in with the Ravenclaws and Fred was momentarily heartbroken. "Well, I've finally decided to man up and ask her."

"Okay." Dom shrugged. "Good for you. How am I involved?"

"Because I need you to occupy Lysander."

"What?" Dominique gripped her pillow to her stomach to avoid pummelling her cousin's face in. "Fred."

"Please?" Fred clasped his hands in front of his chest. "Please! He'll get over being pissed at me, but if he comes across us together in Hogsmeade next weekend he'll probably haul me out and beat me to a pulp."

"Talk to him, you imbecile. Ask him if it's all right if you take his ex-girlfriend to the Three Broomsticks."

"Please, Dom. You know he'll say it's not okay, just because he's scared of losing both of us. Just distract him."

"Okay, let's say I go along with this. How the fuck would you like me to distract him?"

Fred rubbed the back of his neck. "However you want to. Invite him to play a game of Quidditch."

"Lysander hates flying," Dominique pointed out. "Which you ought to know, because he's been your mate for at least ten years."

"Okay, point."

"So?" Dom narrowed her eyes at him. "What d'you want me to do? I can't take him to Hogsmeade, since that's where you'll be, I can't ask him to study, since he's a seventh year and we have no classes together and besides, I'm better at every subject than he is—"

Fred interrupted, "You're definitely not."

"Oh, what? He's good at Care of Magical Creatures and Potions. I don't even take those subjects anymore."

"How do you know what he's good at?" Fred grinned at her. "Are you _interested_ in Lysander, Dominique?"

Dom rolled her eyes. "Interested in the boy who didn't stop tucking his t-shirts into his jeans until he was in fifth year and who always has mud stains on his cheeks and whose shoes stink of unmentionable smells? I don't think so, no."

"He just spends a lot of time out in the Forest, researching the animals. You can't fault him for being passionate about something." Fred's constant defence of his friends, in the face of all logic, would have bothered Dominique, but she knew that Fred defended her when his mates called her cold or a smart-arse or bonkers.

"I can fault him for not showering regularly."

"That was just first year! You didn't even know him then."

Dom sighed. "If you can come up with something for me to do with him, I'll keep him out of your hair while you test this thing with Jas. But if you decide that it'll work between you and her, you have to tell him. It's not fair not to." She hesitated, then asked, "Do you really think he still loves her?"

"No. But I think he wants her to be happy, and even though we're friends, I don't think he thinks I can make anyone happy." Fred's lips twisted for a moment, and Dom reached out to ruffle his red hair.

"You and Jas will be happy," Dominique promised him. Honestly, though, she thought Lysander might have a point. She loved her cousin—they'd been close forever—but sometimes he lived too much in his head. He acted out and played pranks as much as any other student in the school, but after the pranks, after the laughter and the congratulations, Dom sometimes caught him glancing out a window, or wandering the corridors, sad for some inexplicable reason.

She'd always thought she and Fred made a perfect and tragic pair—both unexplainably empty at the oddest times, both lost in history and lost to the present and terrified of the future—they were bad for each other, but they'd never been good at being apart, either.

"I hope we will be." He smiled. "I hope she will be, anyway." He raised his eyebrows. "So, you'll do it? Just take him wherever it is you disappear to all the time—I'm sure he'll be interested in that."

"The library?" Dom mumbled. "Yeah, that's super interesting."

"I'm not an idiot. You're definitely not in the library—or anywhere in the Castle—when you disappear."

Dominique tossed her pillow at him; he caught it. "Go away now, Weasley. You've got what you want."

"Thanks, Miss Dom. You're my favourite."

He chucked the pillow at her and she buried her face in it as Fred shut the door. She tried to fall back asleep, but after a few minutes she gave up and rolled out of bed, determined to find her friends and forget about Lysander Scamander for a few days, at least, until she needed to remember him.

Saturday morning came sooner than she would have liked it to, and Fred spent all of breakfast shooting nervous glances down Gryffindor Table at her, clearly concerned that she was not going to follow through on her promise. She stood after finishing her toast in seven neat bites and crossed to the Ravenclaw Table. Lysander was talking to Jasmine, his hands gesturing in the air as she shifted in her seat and moved porridge around in her bowl.

"Scamander." Dom sat down beside Jas and reached out to take Lysander's wrists, halting his movements mid-gesture.

"Weasley?" Lysander blinked cloudy grey eyes at her. Despite his friendship with Fred, they'd had less than seven conversations over the years.

"I need your help. Are you up to anything today?"

He took his hands back from her gently, as if she was a nervous animal he was afraid of spooking. "Well, it's a Hogsmeade weekend, Dominique."

"I'm aware of that. Were you planning on going? I'd have thought you'd be bored by Hogsmeade by now."

"I was thinking of going. I was just telling Jasmine about how I wanted to explore the hills outside the village—I thought she and Fred might want to join me." He hesitated. "Would you want to come?"

That was the thing about the Scamander twins, the thing that had always thrown her—they were both too stupidly nice. She always felt meaner after a conversation with one of them.

"Maybe some other time." Dominique dug her nails into her wrist. He was not making this easy. "I'll go explore with you some other time—I know a secret passage there—if you'll come out beyond the walls with me today."

"Beyond the walls?" Lysander bit his lip. "Why? What's there?"

"A secret." Any other boy in the school would have hung on the way Dominique rolled that word from her lips. If she had spoken that way to Wesley after he kissed her, he'd never have left her alone. Devin Smith would have been salivating. Sebastian Nott would have followed her into a wildfire.

Lysander Scamander was not an ordinary boy. "What sort of secret?" he asked suspiciously. "And why today?"

"Today because people will be less likely to notice we're going off the grounds since everyone will already have gone to Hogsmeade." And what was there? What did she want Lysander's help with, in her chapel? "I told you, it's a secret. If you really want to know, come with me."

He glanced at Jasmine. She didn't wait for him to speak, hurrying to say, "It's fine, Lysander. Fred and I will be fine, and we can all go up into the hills some other time. Dom's secrets are usually good ones." Jasmine smiled. "You'll have a lot of fun." Dom decided that she'd imagined the way Jasmine's right lid fluttered shut for a moment—a scarily salacious wink to be directed at an ex-boyfriend.

"Brill. Meet you at the front door in twenty?" Dom asked, standing.

Scamander nodded, and Dom returned to the Gryffindor Table, where she smacked Fred on the shoulder as she passed him and hissed, "You owe me twenty years of free ice cream."

"You'll have fun," Fred said to her back.

Scamander was waiting when she got to the front doors, and they walked together silently, down past the gameskeeper's hut and around the edge of the Lake. "So, where are we going, exactly?" Lysander asked finally, breaking the tense silence and interrupting Dom's imaginings of the many ways she could make Fred pay for the unbearable day she was certainly going to have.

"I used to wander out here a lot in my first and second years," she said, by way of explanation. "Have you ever been over here?"

He shook his head. "I spend most of my time in the Forest. This is beyond the borders of it, isn't it?"

"Yeah. There are fewer trees, fewer animals—it's nearer to Muggles." They'd passed through the gates, through the hole in the enchantments that Dom had found back when she was still looking for ways to escape her magic.

"You said you needed my help?" he prompted her.

She stopped. They were between two oak trees, and grey light drifted down, whitening skeletal shapes on Lysander's blond head. "I have never, ever taken anyone out here. I've never told anyone about it and I never even considered taking someone out but then I saw you this morning and I thought you might be able to help, because you like wilderness, and all that." She stumbled off into silence.

"So?"

"There're some old ruins over there." She nodded her head to the right, off through the mossy trunks. "I've spent a lot of time in them."

"Okay," Scamander drew the word out. "Cool, I guess."

"They are, they are cool." Her mind was working. She should have come up with a reason before she got him out here. "The problem is, they're ruins now, but in a few years, they'll be gone, you know?"

"That happens to everything. And it'll probably take another century, at least." He was looking at her like she was crazy.

"But that's just it—I don't want these to disappear, ever. I love them." Now he'd either turn and walk to Hogsmeade to tell her cousin that he thought she was insane, or he'd follow her the rest of the way into the woods, and see why she was so willing to crazy for a building.

"Okay." Lysander held up his hands. "So, you want me to help you—what, stop time?"

"There are spells." She was scrambling through old lectures in her memory, trying desperately to remember what Binns had once told them about the preservation of historical artefacts. "I don't know for sure, but I thought, because you're always out in the Forest and stuff, that you might be able to help me. Because you know about nature and...and stuff." She trailed off. He was staring at her, incredulous.

"Merlin, Dominique. You didn't really put a lot of thought into this, did you?"

Not much, no. "A bit. It sort of just came to me last night. I got really excited and...well, do you want to see the ruins? We can go from there."

He sighed. "Yeah, all right, then. Go on, Weasley."

She felt like she was telling a secret or breaking a trust. Leading Lysander through her trees, bringing him to the door-less, wall-less entryway of her ruins, leading him to the centre of the non-existent room, it all felt forbidden. She relished the feeling, a little. Always reliable Dominique, doing the most treacherous thing she could think of.

The problem, of course, was that this thing was treacherous only to Dominique herself. No one else gave a damn. No matter what she told herself, the chapel wasn't sentient, the trees were only alive in the sense that they grew and eventually died—in bringing Lysander here, Dominique was betraying her past and herself, nothing else.

Lysander was looking around, his eyes falling on the tumbled stones and drifting up to the roof of branches and blue sky—he looked enchanted. Dominique considered that maybe this wasn't a betrayal at all, maybe it was just right.

"I see what you mean," he said, after allowing enough time for the silence to stretch unbroken and natural between them. "We can't just let time have this."

Dominique turned to face him, startled at the grin that was spreading across his face. "Really?"

"Honest." He shook his head. "I can't believe this has been here all along, and I never knew. How did you find it?"

"I told you, I was just wandering, and one day I came across it. It used to be a Muggle chapel."

He nodded. "I recognise it. Probably a few centuries old."

Dominique shrugged. "But it hasn't been abandoned for _that_ long, has it?"

"Nearly." Scamander walked along the stone borders, his fingers brushing long and skinny over the rough surface, tracing the carvings of window-frames where they appeared in the once-walls. "It's truly amazing." He paused in his examination, turned to find her watching him. She stood still in the centre, the place where she'd Apparated all those years ago, the place where she pitched her tents on weekends and the place that made her feel safest. "Thank you for bringing me here, Dominique."

"Sure." She waited, watching while he finished following the stones around the perimeter. "So, d'you think we can Charm it to last forever?"

"Maybe not forever," Lysander said, coming to join her at the centre again. "But I'm sure we can put some protective Charms on it that'll make it stay like this for a few more centuries. Magic isn't infinite either, you know."

"I know," she said, although she hadn't.

"But we should probably do some research before we try anything. Do you want to go back up to the library and start?" Lysander had an eager look to his eyes as he glanced back the way they'd come.

Dom shook her head. "Let's stay out here a little longer. We can have a picnic, or something."

"Did you bring food?" Lysander glanced at the small bag hanging from her right shoulder.

She opened it and pulled out a worn Holyhead Harpies blanket, which she spread out on the ground with a practised flap through the air. Dom emptied her bag on the impromptu tablecloth. She had snagged sandwiches and glass-bottled pumpkin juice and biscuits from the kitchens. Lysander stared at all for barely a second before settling in.

"At least you planned the food thing out," he muttered, before biting into an egg and mayo sandwich and giving into an expression of pure delight.

"Quite well, too." Dom sipped at a warm pumpkin juice and tugged a dandelion from the ground beside the blanket.

"Why did you start wandering out here?" Lysander asked, after he'd finished his sandwich and had moved onto his own pumpkin juice.

"I don't know." Dominique dug her hands into the dirt beside her and looked at the way her fingers ended, as if the ground had taken her fingertips away. "I guess I just felt as if Hogwarts was such a different world, like it was sort of fantasy, or make-believe, and I wanted to get outside of its walls for a while. To remind myself that somewhere else existed."

Lysander blew air from between his lips so the blond hair which feathered into his eyes flew up for a moment before settling back down, exactly as it had been. "But don't you think this is even more of a fairytale? Pretty little girl finds ruins in the woods—sounds a bit like a fantasy to me. You escape out here, don't you?"

"I guess." Dominique looked around. "But _here_ is more substantial than there."

"What does that mean?"

Ordinarily Dominique would have avoided this conversation. She usually mumbled nonsense answers to personal questions, so that whoever she was talking to would give up on her in less than three exchanges. But she had to keep Lysander here, and besides, he didn't ask questions the way other people did. His eyes didn't leave hers, even as he sipped his pumpkin juice, and his voice wasn't accusatory or judgemental. For some reason he seemed to really want to understand her, not just to know her, and that made a world of difference to Dom.

"Things are always changing at school. The staircases shift and the portraits move and people stop being who they were. These ruins have stayed the same, the whole time I've been coming here. Plants grow and leaves change colours and snow falls, but eventually it's all back to how it was. I like that."

"Kind of boring though, isn't it? I mean, it's beautiful here, but without change—how do you know time's passing?"

"Like I said," Dominique grinned, "the seasons still happen."

"Well, okay, point. But say the seasons didn't mean a thing, they rolled in on each other and you forgot that someone decided there's four seasons to a year. Wouldn't it get boring, all that sameness? The ancient stones and everything being entirely outside of time, outside of humanity?"

"Why do you like animals so much, Lysander?"

"They are never petty. They're supposed to be focused on survival, but sometimes I see animals act in entirely selfless ways—they're often more human than humans are." He looked serious. "I know you're saying they're how I escape. Maybe you're right. But at least animals change. You act like you're afraid of the future."

And there was the judgement—there was the accusation. Dominique stuffed her uneaten sandwich back into her bag and stood, needlessly brushing off her trousers. "We should head up to the library and start researching. If you still want to, that is?"

Lysander looked up at her. "All right, yeah." He followed her back through the woods, paying attention this time so he could get there on his own, if he ever needed to.

They spent the afternoon in the library, flipping through books and scribbling notes on parchment, underlining spells they expected to work and starring ones they considered possibilities. When the lights flickered on by the windows and Lysander's stomach began growling they sent the books soaring back to their places on the shelves and agreed to meet the following Friday after classes to continue their research.

She needed to know that her ruins would be there as long as she wanted them, as long as spectral parts of her being might want them. And Lysander Scamander had unknowingly become central to that need.

"You're a genius," Fred told her on Monday morning, when they met for breakfast in the Great Hall.

"Your date went well?" Dom asked, sipping at her coffee while Fred piled his plate with enough food to feed all of London.

"It was brilliant. And Lysander doesn't suspect a thing." Fred glanced sideways at her. "Whatever you did to him, it's taking up so much of his thoughts that I don't even think he noticed me the entire time we were studying together yesterday."

Dom shrugged, but inside she was thrilled. If he was that interested in the chapel, then they might actually be able to make it work.

Lysander was already in the library when Dominique arrived on Friday; he sat in the corner by one of the windows, so late-afternoon light fell across his face and lightened his eyes to an almost-grey. He waved when he saw her, and she slid into the seat across from him as he pushed a stack of books across the table at her.

"I think," he began, once she dropped her bag on the floor and pulled out some parchment and a quill, "that if we just get a few more good charms down, and then go through our lists and consolidate them, we could spend tomorrow trying them out. Does that sound good?"

"Perfect," Dom answered, and then they stopped talking, because the librarian was lingering in the stacks near them, her eyes sharp as they fell on their table.

Three hours later Lysander stretched his arms over his head before closing the cover of the last book in his pile. Dom had finished going through hers a few minutes before. Lysander scooted his chair around to sit beside her. They placed their lists of spells on the graffitied surface and read through them slowly, Dominique writing the ones they decided to try on a third sheet of parchment.

It was long past dinner by the time they finished, and Lysander glanced at his watch with a sigh. "I wish we could go out now—I suppose it's too late?"

Dominique hesitated. "We wouldn't be able to do any spells tonight," she pointed out. "It'll be too dark."

"That's true. It's not even ten yet, though. What were your plans for tonight?"

"I was actually going to go camping."

"Camping?" He stopped stacking the books and looked up to stare at her. "Where?"

She didn't say anything.

"The chapel? You camp out there?"

"Sometimes." Dom refused to look at him.

"Isn't it, like, uncomfortable? Why don't you just stay in your dorm and go out early?"

"It's so pretty out there at night." She turned from the shelves abruptly, grinning. "Come with me!"

He stared at her. "People tell me I'm insane regularly, but I'm starting to see that I have nothing on you."

If anyone else had said that to her, Dominique would have taken it personally. But Lysander was looking at her like he was amazed, and that was not necessarily a bad thing. "Come _on_, Sander."

"Don't call me that."

She rolled her eyes. "If you come with me I won't." He bit his lip. "I promise it's not that uncomfortable. And you should _see_ the stars out there. And sometimes wild owls come by, and they're the loveliest creatures."

"Fine, fine, I'll come."

"Brilliant!" Dominique folded the list of spells into her bag and grabbed onto his hand, leading him out into the corridor. He disentangled his fingers once they were set on their path toward Ravenclaw. "You get your things," Dom told him as they stopped outside of the dormitory. "I've got mine already. I'll wait here for you."

He came back out a few minutes later, and followed her down the stairs and into alcoves as professors passed. Finally they reached the hole in the boundaries of the grounds and Dominique cast a _Lumos _charm, sending the trees around them into twisting shadows.

They walked in silence for a few moments before Lysander whispered, "It's sort of creepy, Dom. Do you come out here at night a lot?"

"Not really," Dom lied.

They reached the ruins, finally, and Dom placed blankets on the ground. The sky was clear and the air was unseasonably warm, so she didn't bother to set up her tent.

"I'm not really one for stargazing," Lysander told her, as she sat cross-legged on one of the blankets and patted the other one for him to join her.

"Why not?" Dominique felt a frisson of disappointment begin somewhere around her gut.

He sat beside her and leaned back, looking up at the glow of white specks above them. "We'll never get to the stars, and there are so many amazing things here, on Earth—I don't get why people are always looking far away for beauty and mystery."

"It's not really one or the other, though, is it?" Dom lay on her back, her legs bent into triangles. "Like, there are pretty stars up there, and people say they tell the future and maybe they do, but to me they're just gorgeous. And then there are tree branches nearer to us, and those look darker and more menacing tonight than they usually do, and I love those, too."

He turned his head to look at her; she kept her gaze locked on the sky. "I don't know, Dominique. I think I'm different from you. I think you fall in love quickly. I don't."

Dominique snorted. "I don't fall in love."

"You just said you love the tree branches and the stars. A bit contradictory, isn't it?"

"That's different." She hated Fred, suddenly, for sneaking off with Jas and leaving her to Lysander. Hated him because he may have known that Lysander would challenge her, wouldn't accept all the bullshit that fell from her mouth. Then again, Fred might not have known that she'd let Lysander in as much as she had. Dominique certainly hadn't planned to open up to him, not at all.

Lysander assumed that her silence meant that she was thinking, so he didn't speak for a few minutes. When Dom still didn't say anything, he prompted, "How? How is it different?"

"That's just superficial. I love it because it's pretty. If I _fell _in love that way, I'd be all over Sebastian Nott."

He chuckled. "And you're not?"

"Have you ever seen me talk to him?" Her tone had a bite of venom beneath the surface.

Lysander muttered, "Sorry, no, you're right. I was just teasing."

"I know you were."

They didn't say anything else and soon fell asleep. Lysander was looking at her when his eyes fell shut; she was looking at the stars.

Sunlight drifted down through a haze of cool mist early the next morning, waking Lysander. Dominique was already up, half of a croissant sticking from her lips, her hands busy collecting rocks in a pile by the far wall of the ruins.

"What're you doing?" Lysander asked, cracking his back as he sat up.

"I thought we should test the charms on something other than the chapel, just in case something goes wrong. D'you want a croissant? I've got cold coffee, too."

"A croissant sounds good."

Dominique tossed Lysander her magically expanded bag and he reached inside running his hands over notebooks and feather quills and a canvas tent and a few glass vials until he finally felt the brown paper wrapping. He pulled the croissant from the bag and unwrapped it, biting into it as Dominique tugged her blanket from the ground and folded it, tucking it into her bag. She nudged against his thigh with her sneakered foot, and he scooted over onto the ground so she could get to his blanket.

"Are you always this awake in the morning?" Lysander asked around his croissant.

"This isn't awake. Merlin, you should see Victoire in the morning. She looks like the fucking sun."

Lysander looked at her. She had her hair in a frizzy braid down her back, and her hands and jeans were marked with dirt. Her grey top hung loose around her waist, and she was smiling at him. "I think you look like the sun," he muttered.

"What?" Dominique had looked down at her pile of rocks, and she glanced back up. "What'd you say?"

"Nothing."

Dominique shrugged. "All right. Are you ready to do some magic?"

Lysander reached for his bag and pulled out his wand. "Let's start with the easy ones, yeah?"

Dominique waited for him to join her by the pile of stones, and then she handed Lysander the list of spells. "So here's my idea. We place all the spells we really liked on this pile, and then I cast a few intense weather charms, just over this pile, and see if they have any effect whatsoever."

"Weather charms?" Lysander asked. "Those are impossible."

"Not on a small scale. It'll be fine."

"They're so draining, though. I've only been able to make it rain over my desk. Once."

"Like I said, I'll be doing them. If you could just do these charms," she nodded at the sheet of parchment, "and I'll do the rest."

He glanced at her. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, _Merlin_. Get a move on."

Lysander rolled his eyes. "All right. Step back."

Dominique hopped up on the wall opposite Lysander, and watched as he began casting protective charms over the pile of rocks. His wand movements were intricate, and his lips moved unhurriedly through the spells. Sometimes they sent visible waves of coloured magic over the pile of rocks. Others manifested in showers of sparks, and occasionally nothing happened at all, but Lysander continued casting, so he must have felt something.

It took him an hour to get through all of the spells, and finally he stepped back, sticking his wand in his pocket and rubbing his wrist.

"Your turn." He turned to her, and there was a shadow of fatigue in his eyes.

"Thanks, Lysander." Dominique hopped down from the wall, raising her wand as she neared the magically enhanced pile, her weather charms already spilling from her lips.

The air above and around the rocks became a circle of storms. Forks of lightning flickered through white torrents of miniature raindrops, striking the rocks with tiny explosions. Dominique cast a charm at the far end, and wind whirled visible in the rain, whipping her hurricane's winds into a tornado—it picked up rocks and deposited them at the far end, where the twister dissipated harmless into the air. She sent a surge of energy through the pile, which moved in jerks and shakes and sent rocks tumbling; Dominique thought that they probably ought to have used something other than gravity to keep them piled, but it was too late for that. The rocks didn't crack in her earthquake, and after thirty minutes of continuous rain, wind, lightning, and repetitive tornadoes and earthquakes, she lowered her wand, her weather turning in on itself until the air around the pile was the same as the air everywhere, just slightly heavier.

She stuck her wand in her pocket and lifted a rock from the pile. There was no change in its surface—the lightning hadn't blackened it, the super-hurricane force winds hadn't eroded it—it was whole. She turned to grin at Lysander and found him leaning against the far wall, staring at her.

His eyes were wide, and his lips slightly parted. Dominique reached up and pushed her hair back from her face. "Lysander? What's wrong?"

He shook his head.

"Lysander?" Dominique repeated.

He pushed away from the wall and strode across the chapel to meet her. His hands landed on her waist and he pulled her toward him. At first she thought he was hugging her, and she was surprised but not scared, and then he angled his mouth toward hers. Her heart thundered for a horrible moment and then she lowered her head so his lips caught her hair, kissing exactly on the part at the top of her head.

She reached for his hands and took them from her waist, releasing them and pushing her palms against his chest so he stumbled back a few steps.

She finally caught her breath enough to ask, "What the fuck are you doing?"

"Well, I was trying to kiss you." He stuck his hands in his pockets.

"Why?" Her voice almost shook on that one word, and she took a step away from him.

"Why? Dominique, are you really that blind?"

"Fuck," Dominique stepped back again, her legs bumping against the rocks behind her. "What is it with you? You blokes, you're always just _taking_. The minute you decide you want something, you just take it. Who the fuck gave you the right?"

"Us blokes? The minute?" He shook his head again, but he didn't try to move closer to her. "Who are you even grouping me with? And who says that I haven't wanted you for longer than today?"

"Why today, then? Why not wait until you're sure of how I feel about you, or why not tell me last week, when I first asked you to come out here?"

"Dominique," he sighed. "Dom. What's wrong? All this, just because I tried to kiss you? If you don't want to kiss me, that's fine. I mean, it sucks, right, but we'll still work on the chapel and you don't need to worry about me. Why're you looking at me like I've done something unfixable?"

"Because it's not fair. I've only ever been kissed once, and I didn't want it. And it could have been worse but I've always hoped that my second kiss would go better, that I'd initiate it, maybe. That I'd have some choice." She was staring at the ground. "I know it's stupid. It's just lips, right, just lips and tongue and maybe hands and sometimes teeth—kissing is not really that big of a deal. And I'm old enough to do whatever I want. But that's just it." She looked up at him, her mouth twisted. "I don't know whether I want you. And it doesn't seem fair to just expect me to respond, just like that, with no warning."

"Okay. I didn't know, Dom. I _am _sorry." Lysander held up his hands. "Look, hands off, I promise. I won't touch you again unless you initiate it." He hesitated. "It's just...you're funny, you know? And wicked and crazy and fantastic. But I've never seen anything quite as...as...incredible as you creating that storm. It's like...I can't explain it, I don't think, but I really thought that if I didn't kiss you, then I'd forever regret it."

Dom shrugged. "And would you have?"

He rolled his eyes. "Not if I knew that my kissing you was so abhorrent."

"Not you." She shook her head. "Not just you. Everyone, right now. If that makes it better."

"Yeah, not so much." He turned to look at the walls. "So, it looks like those spells will work all right, at least for a while. Do you want to start today?"

"You're exhausted, and I'm pretty tired, too. Let's just say we're finished for today, and we'll come back tomorrow. We'll probably have to do it section by section, so it'll take at least two weeks."

Lysander grinned at her. "Sounds fun."

"It could be."

They walked back to the Castle together, and when they parted at the top of the staircase Dom turned to face Lysander. "We're fine. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Of course." He walked away first.

They spent well over two weeks safeguarding the chapel, casting spells over each stone section of the walls, and in that time Lysander did not touch her once. Not even when she fell on her ass tripping over a root. Then he just laughed at her from a few feet behind her, while she struggled to her feet and wiped the dirt off her jeans with an angry backwards glance at Lysander. "Bastard," she muttered, but she didn't mean it.

A few weekends before she and Lysander finished their work on the ruins, Dominique cornered Fred in his dormitory. He was sitting up in bed, reading a textbook for Potions, and she tugged the book from his hands and sat down in front of him.

"Fred."

"Dominique."

"You and Jas are still dating, right?"

"Yes." He avoided her gaze.

"Is it going well?"

"Very well."

"Have you told Lysander yet?"

Fred shook his head. "No."

"Why the hell not? It's not like he'll care." She hesitated. "Right?"

"He shouldn't care," Fred said. "But I don't know, Dom. It's just easier right now, to leave him out of it. He and Jas had a pretty nasty breakup, remember? I don't want to bring any of that up to the surface again."

"It was _two years_ ago."

Fred shook his head. "We'll tell him soon, I promise. Just...not today."

Dominique muttered, "You're being an arsehole," before dropping Fred's book back on his lap and storming from the boys' dormitory.

She didn't stop in the common room, continuing down the corridors until she reached Ravenclaw, where she fumbled with the riddle until Scorpius Malfoy came up behind her and let her in. Lysander wasn't in the Ravenclaw common room, so she headed up the stairs to his dormitory.

He stood by the window, tugging at the end of his tie to straighten it. He looked thoughtful, his long fingers slow on his tie. She watched him for a moment. She had been about to tell him about Jas and Fred, but something about the way he looked stopped her. She didn't want to talk to him.

"Lysander," she said. He jumped and turned.

"Dom? Is everything all right? What're you doing here?"

"I'm tired." The way she felt was complicated and didn't make any sense, but she crossed the room anyway. She glanced at his eyes for just a second before her eyes dropped to his lips. Her fingers were light on his wrists, she kept his hands at his waist and stood on tiptoe, pressing her lips against his lightly.

He had frozen when she first touched him, and he didn't move as she let go of him and stepped back, looking up at him. "What're you tired of?" he finally asked.

Dom didn't say anything at first, and then she whispered, "All this stupid space between us."

She didn't have time to blink before his hands were at her waist and his lips were on her lips. He kissed her slowly, like he was exploring and experimenting, and she found that this time she didn't want to disappear or step away. They didn't leave his dormitory for a very long time.

Work on the chapel went even slower after that, when they had to take frequent breaks to learn each other, but Dominique had never been quite so content in her hideaway.

"Lysander," she whispered, a few weeks after she first kissed him. They were camping in the chapel ruins, lying curled around each other beneath the angle of a canvas tent, and she thought he might be asleep.

"Yeah?" He wasn't.

"I need to tell you something."

"Yeah?" His breath blew strands of her hair up into the darkness and they floated back down through the still air, strands of gold in the night sky.

"Fred doesn't want you to know because he doesn't want anything to change. But everything's already changed, so I want to tell you. But it's not really my secret to tell so if you don't want to hear it from me that's okay."

"You're being very confusing, Dom."

"I'm tired and it's late."

"Okay. Tell me whatever it is, so we can sleep."

She pressed her face into his neck. "Fred and Jas are together."

Lysander stiffened. "How long?"

"Since early October." She pulled her face away from him, a little bit. "Does it matter?"

"It wouldn't, except that they didn't tell me. Why wouldn't they tell me?"

"Can you talk to Fred about it? Please? I don't want to get any more in the middle than I am."

"Early October." Lysander didn't seem to be listening to her. "Early October, as in when you first invited me out here? When Jas and Fred went to Hogsmeade alone?"

"Yes," Dominique confessed, "but," she hurried, "he just asked me to distract you. I decided to bring you out here, and Fred had nothing to do with me seeing you after that first time. I promise."

Lysander was silent for a moment. "Fuck, it's like Fred's been playing us all in some elaborate unnecessary game."

"Don't be upset with him," Dom pleaded. "Don't be upset at all. He was just afraid, you know? We all do stupid things when we're scared."

"Don't tell me how to feel, Dom." Lysander softened his words with a kiss to her temple. "Fred and I will sort this out tomorrow, and I will probably still be upset with him, and he will get upset with me, and we'll get over it, sometime." He pulled her closer. "For now, let's just pretend we can stay here, in our ruins, forever."

"Forever," Dominique murmured, loving the nature of the word "our." "That's all right with me."

**A/N:** Still feeling rusty. I appreciate reviews!


	6. dennis and gabrielle part two

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Harry Potter._

Pairing: Dennis Creevey + Gabrielle Delacour  
>This is a sequel to the first story in this collection, so I'd read that first if you haven't yet (<span>we won't ever come home<span>).  
><span>For<span>: Anonymous

:::

keeping on

Martine has found them out. Gabrielle should have known better than to take Dennis to Martine's favourite crêpe place; of course her co-worker showed up just as Gab and Dennis were leaving. That is how Martine's life works out—gossip places itself neatly in her lap.

She corners Gabrielle at work the next morning. "How could you not tell me?"

"What is Gabrielle hiding this time?" Nicolas asks, peering around the edge of her cubicle.

Gabrielle rolls her eyes. "I'm not hiding anything. I told you guys I'd started dating ages ago."

"You said," Martine hissed, "that you had a date. You did not say that you had a _boyfriend_."

"Gabrielle has a boyfriend?" Henri calls from across the office.

"He's not..." Gabrielle drifts off at the incredulous look on Martine's face.

"She does!" Martine crows. "And you can protest all you want, Gabrielle, I know true love when I see it. That Brit you were with last night was not the only one drooling, and it was certainly not for the food."

"Oooh, he's British?" Jeanne interjects from the neighbouring cubicle. "I bet he's sexy. Is he sexy?"

Martine raises her eyebrows at Gabrielle. "He's all right," Gabrielle mutters.

"He's very tall," Martine adds. "And I would say he's sexy. Gabby just doesn't want you to try to steal him from her, Jeanne."

"Fuck off, Martine," Jeanne says.

"Yeah, go away, won't you?" Gabrielle stands and propels Martine toward the doorway. "I actually have to do work today."

"I will only go if you promise to properly introduce me to your _lover_. Not just a rushed chance meeting at a restaurant. A real dinner." Martine grips the top of the cubicle tightly, so Gabrielle risks sending the whole row down if she continues pushing her friend into the hall.

"Fine, fine."

"Oh, can I come?" Nicolas asks from where he's leaning against the wall by Lucia's closed office door.

"Sure, let's just make it a whole office party." Gabrielle sounds sour.

"That could be fun," Nicolas grins, "but I was thinking something a bit more intimate. Just you, me, Martine, and your beau. Friday night?"

"Yes," Martine agrees before Gabrielle even opens her mouth. "That is perfect."

"I hate you both." But Gabrielle is speaking to the air; Nicolas and Martine have returned to their desks.

She returns home after work, expecting to find Dennis asleep on her sofa, since he had worked the morning at the _patisserie_ on the corner—his savings from his job as a wandmaker's assistant in London couldn't support him forever—but she unlocks her door to find that the pile of scarves on her sofa has not been touched.

"Dennis?" she calls, weaving past the sofa to the open door to her bedroom. He isn't on her bed, either, and he hasn't left a note on the counter in the kitchen. Her flat has the strange unsettled feeling of emptiness.

She waves her wand at the small fireplace and tosses a handful of Floo Powder in before sticking her head among the flames and saying Dennis's address. A rumpled blanket on the floor in front of the fire obscures her view of his flat and her call of, "Dennis!" seems muffled in the blue cloth.

His owl hoots in response, and then she hears footsteps. A white sock kicks the blanket out of the way and Dennis drops to his knees in front of her, tugging at a deep green tie around his neck. "Hey, Gabby, sorry I didn't stop by today. I got an owl this morning and it sort of caught me off guard."

"What's going on?" Gab shifts slightly. She hates communicating this way—Martine's been trying to get her a mobile phone for years, and maybe now might be the time.

"It was from Harry. He and Ginny are coming to Paris on holiday and they wanted to see if I wanted to meet up. They're arriving today—the owl must've gotten caught in winds over the Channel or something—and I thought I'd meet them at the Apparation Checkpoint. Haven't you heard from them? I thought they'd have sent you a message."

Gab shakes her head. "I don't really know them that well."

"Well, I'm sure they'd like to see you again. Want to get dinner with all of us tonight?"

"And tell them what?"

Dennis leans close to the fire, his eyes narrowed. "That we're dating? Are you keeping me a secret, Gab? It's been five months."

"No!" Gab hurries, "No, of course I'm not. In fact, my friends Martine—the one we met last night—and Nicolas want to get dinner with us on Friday."

"Perfect. So, I'll come out on Friday, and you'll come out tonight? Meet me at my flat at around eight, and then we'll pick Harry and Ginny up from their hotel." He glances at his watch. "And now I've really got to go. See you later!" He turns away from the fireplace, and Gab pulls her head from the flames in her flat, steadying herself with one hand on the marble hearth.

All of a sudden, there are far too many people in the world. She sighs and rubs her hands across her face, leaving traces of ash from the fire on her cheeks. The last few months with Dennis have been lovely in their isolation, and she's ashamed to admit—even to herself—that she is scared of what introducing _others_ to this whole equation will do to them.

"It'll be fine." She stands and wipes her hands on her grey skirt, walks through the flat to her bedroom and tugs open her wardrobe, and pulls on a pair of jeans and a jumper before washing her face in lukewarm water from the tap and staring at herself for a moment in the yellow-lit mirror. "Harry and Ginny are sweet," she reminds her reflection, "and you're mostly related. Martine won't be too much of a bitch." But it's not really the other people she's worried about; it's herself.

She arrives at Dennis's flat a little before eight, and he meets her at the entrance. "Hey." He leans down to drop a kiss on Gab's cheek. "How was your day?"

"All right." She takes his hand as they start walking down the street. "How was yours? How are Harry and Ginny?"

"My day was good. And they're doing well—they've left the kids with Ginny's parents and I don't think I've ever seen Harry looking so relaxed."

Gab squeezes his hand. "When was the last time you saw them?"

Dennis shrugs. "A few weeks before I left for Paris, I think. Harry and I used to get lunch every month or so." He shakes his head; Gab catches the movement out of the corner of her eye. "It's funny. When I was little, I would have killed to spend time with Harry. Now it's out of the ordinary _not_ to spend time with him."

And he doesn't say it, but Gab knows that Dennis is thinking how he would give up knowing Harry Potter if it meant that the War—that thing that had brought them together—had never happened. They had both been young and they had both lost people; Dennis had had no one and Harry had been there for him—their friendship happened after a lot of awkward lunches and silent teas. Gab knows all of this, and she also knows that sometimes being this close to Harry hurts Dennis, because after all, Harry had been Colin's hero.

She leans her head against his shoulder and he smiles down at her. "It'll be fun, Gab. Stop worrying."

"I'm not worrying," she promises. He laughs.

"You don't do very well at lying, Gab, darling."

She hisses air between her teeth. "Don't call me darling."

He rolls his eyes. "Sorry, sorry. We're here." They've stopped beside stone steps leading up to old ornate doors. Dennis leads Gab up the stairs and they both mutter, "Merci," to the doorman who holds the door open for them.

Ginny and Harry stand at the base of the staircase, and Gab inhales. She hasn't seen them since the last time she was in Britain, about five or so years before, when her nephew Louis was born, and they look older. Ginny has her red head resting against Harry's shoulder, and Harry's hand is drawing lazy designs over her upper arm. They're deep in conversation and don't notice Gab and Dennis's entrance right away.

When they do, Ginny bounds forward a few steps ahead of Harry and brushes her lips against Gab's cheeks. "Gabrielle! How are you?"

Gab blinks. Ginny had never been overtly friendly. "Well, thank you. And you?" She smiles at Harry as he comes up behind his wife and shakes Dennis's hand. "How was travelling?"

"I'm good and travelling was fine. Thank Merlin Dennis was there when we arrived, though; I would have gotten so lost trying to find this place."

Dennis shakes his head. "I would never have been able to find it if it wasn't for Gabby. I was still getting lost daily when she took me under her wing."

Gab rolls her eyes. "You'd have been fine, Dennis." She nods toward the door. "Shall we?"

"Yes, let's," Ginny agrees.

Gab leads them from the hotel lobby, Dennis catching onto her hand where it's swinging at her side.

"Where are you taking us?" Harry asks. "Somewhere with real French food, I hope."

"Of course," Dennis says. "We'd never welcome you to Paris with Italian or Irish."

Harry chuckles and then jumps into a story about the first time James had lasagne, how he got cheese everywhere and somehow managed to get more in Albus's hair than in his own belly. The rest of the walk to the restaurant is full of stories about their family, and Gabrielle's nieces and nephew, and she's laughing by the time they're seated at a table in a small glass-fronted restaurant.

Ginny regales them with tales of the Holyhead Harpies and at some point they refill their wine glasses, and Gab is just beginning to think that she can handle this whole _other people_ thing when Harry opens his mouth and says, in an awful serious tone that immediately puts Gabrielle on the defensive, "Dennis, I was hoping to talk to you about something...work-related."

Dennis glances at Gab quickly, so fast she barely notices the flick of his eyes, "Could we discuss it later, Harry?" He sounds wary and Gab's nails dig into her palms.

"I think it'd be best to just get it out now." Harry's eyes skim over Gab's undoubtedly scared expression and settle on Dennis's face. "I know that you're happy here—anyone could see that—but when you left London you told us it wouldn't be forever." Ginny lays her hand on Harry's forearm, as if warning him to tread carefully.

Gab glances at Dennis. He looks anxious. "I know, but, Harry, I didn't think—"

"Merlin, you both look as if I'm about to tell you that you can't eat chocolate anymore or something. I suppose I should have started off by saying that I'm not going to _force_ you to come back, Dennis."

Gab lets out the breath she'd been holding but Dennis still looks tense. "Okay. So, what's this about then?" he asks.

"I just want to know," Harry says, "whether I should hire a different wand expert for the Department. DMLE needs one, Dennis, and I've been holding the position since I first offered it to you last year. I would still prefer to have you on the team, of course, but if you're determined to stay in Paris—and I understand, if you are," Harry's eyes fall on Gab again, and he offers her a small smile, "then I would like to fill the position."

Gab hadn't known that Dennis was up for a position at the Ministry—she thought he had left his job as an assistant wandmaker for his own early-mid-life crisis—but she expects him to tell Harry to go ahead and offer the job to someone else. Instead, he lays a hand on her thigh beneath the table and says, "I'll let you know before you go back to England, all right?"

Harry nods. "Of course."

Ginny turns the conversation back to Victoire and Dominique and Louis, but Gab can no longer focus on her family. Her attention is on Dennis hand, the way his fingers press through her trousers, the familiar pressure of his five fingertips. She refuses to lose that.

They return Harry and Ginny to their hotel after drinks and dessert, and Dennis walks alongside Gab in silence until they arrive at her flat. He leans down and tries to capture her lips in a kiss, but she turns her face so he kisses her cheek instead.

"I'll see you Friday, then?"

"Wait." Gab reaches out and grabs his left wrist. "Dennis, don't you think we should talk?"

"Gabby," he sighs. "I need to sort some stuff out, first. Okay? We'll talk Friday, I promise." And then he very gently removes her hand and Disapparates, even though they're in a Muggle district in Paris and there are people around. No one seems to notice, though. Someone should have, because the way Gab's heart feels the sound of it tearing should have been audible throughout the city.

She waits by the door for a few moments before she acknowledges that Dennis won't be reappearing to tell her he's kidding, of course he'll stay in Paris. Of course he'll give up a job he's never even mentioned to her. Of course he will.

She doesn't even get undressed before falling into bed; she pulls her pillow over face and sleeps until an owl taps against her window. She falls out of bed and opens the window so the bird can swoop inside, then pulls the letter from its leg and blinks at it a few times before the words come in to focus.

_Dear Gabrielle:  
>I'm sorry if I blindsided you yesterday by mentioning Dennis's job to him. I thought that he would have spoken to you about it before, but judging from the look on your face (as Ginny has pointed out in no uncertain terms) you weren't aware. I didn't mean to cause any problems between the two of you, and I am sorry if I have. I am glad that Dennis and you have grown close since he's moved to Paris—Ginny says she wants to hear how you met when we get dinner on Sunday, so I suppose you should prepare that story.<br>__Again, I'm sorry. I hope that I haven't messed everything up horribly.  
><em>_Love from,  
><em>_Harry_

Gabrielle rolls her eyes and tosses the paper on her bed. She holds out her arm for the owl to land on and brings him to the window, sending him off among the angled rooftops with a quick jerk of her forearm. Harry never intends to hurt anyone, but that doesn't mean that he _doesn't_ hurt people. Gabrielle gets dressed in the same skirt she wore the day before and slips her feet into ballet flats before grabbing her wand and running her fingers through her hair, before Apparating from her living room to the special Apparation point in the storeroom of the office.

Work that day goes agonizingly slowly, but she knows that going home will be worse, with nothing other than carryover projects and books to distract from the possibility of losing Dennis, and so she approaches Martine's desk near the end of the day. "Hey."

"No, you cannot get out of dinner tomorrow night," Martine says, without looking up. "I must meet your man."

"I wasn't going to try to get out of dinner tomorrow. I was just wondering if you were free to go out tonight?"

"Oh." Martine glances up from the stack of papers on her desk. "Depends. What do you have in mind?"

"Just drinks," and Gab's aware that she sounds like she's sort of pleading with her best friend to hang out with her but she really wants something to take her mind off of the impossible fact that Dennis might return to Britain.

"Sure." Martine hesitates. "Is everything all right?"

"Fine!" Gab hurries. "I just haven't spent much time with you lately and that needs to change."

"Are you sure? You and boyfriend haven't had a falling out?"

"Everything's fine," Gabrielle repeats.

"All right. Want to come over to mine tonight? We'll leave from there."

"Yeah, sounds good." Gab turns to leave the cubicle. "See you then."

Martine is practically salivating with curiosity, but she doesn't bother Gabrielle until they're seated in the corner of a bar, glasses full of harsh fruity drinks, and then she tilts her head and says, "So have you broken up with him?"

Gabrielle blinks in surprise. "Of course not." She should have expected that question—after all, Martine has always known her to have commitment issues.

"Why 'of course'? You seem unhappy." She raises her eyebrows. "Although you were happy enough yesterday afternoon, so what happened last night? Did you catch him cheating on you?"

Gab sighs. "Merlin, no. He just..." she hesitates, "he might go back to the UK."

Martine is silent for a moment. "And you'll miss him? Are you thinking about moving, too?"

"No!" The thought had barely even crossed Gabrielle's mind. "I...here..." she hesitates. "Here I have work and I have you and I have _Paris_. What do I have there?"

"You'd have him," Martine says. "And your sister, and your nieces and nephew. I know you miss them."

"Not enough to leave here, though. Never enough for that."

"Well, good. I would have missed you horribly." She bites her lip. "But being here without him, though? I mean...you've been happier lately." She shakes her head. "And as much as it bothers _me_ when you're not your pessimistic cynical self, I think I'd rather you weren't sad and missing him all the time."

Gab takes a deep sip of her drink before saying, "Well, thanks, that is awfully kind of you."

"I know." Martine sighs. "Seriously, Gab, I'm just trying to stop you from being an idiot and hurting yourself. What do you want to happen?"

"I want him to stay here," Gab says. "I don't want anything to change." It scares her that her voice sounds shaky.

Martine sighs. "Hate to tell you, Gabrielle, but things change."

"I _know_ that." Gab drops her head into her hands. "But I don't want them to." And now she sounds like she's whining.

Martine drains the rest of her drink. "Come on, love, finish up. We've got somewhere to be."

"Where?"

"You'll see." Gabrielle finishes her drink and Martine takes her arm, drops some Euros in the bartender's hand, and drags her outside. They walk in silence for a few blocks, before Gabrielle recognises the direction they're going.

"No, Martine."

"No? I think you mean yes."

"How'd you even get his address?" Gabrielle is still walking alongside her friend, even though she knows she should turn around, go home, and see Dennis tomorrow, the way he'd said.

"It's in your bag. I noticed yesterday."

"Great. So what's your plan? Buzz up to his flat and tell him that he needs to stay here or take me with him? This is his decision, Martine."

"But you're a part of it, so you should be there when he decides. Besides, it's only been a day, right, and you're missing him already? It might help for him to know that."'

"I'm not going to try and change his mind." They're in front of Dennis's building, and Gab pulls out of Martine's grip and whirls to face her, all the stress she's felt over the past day suddenly manifesting as anger. "If he cares more about a job than he does about me, or if he misses England enough to move back there, or if he is just tired of France and French and pastries—if whatever is making him want to leave is greater than what could make him want to stay, then he should go. But that is not my decision, Martine, and you cannot just decide that it should be."

"Gabrielle." Martine is looking at the street behind her, and Gab feels familiar hands settle on her shoulders. Martine bites her lip. "Hi, Dennis."

"Martine," Dennis says. Gab doesn't turn to look at him; his voice sounds bemused. "I'll see you tomorrow night for dinner?"

"Wha—oh, yeah. Yeah, I'll see you both tomorrow." She waves apologetically to Gabrielle and disappears around a corner. Gab still doesn't move.

Dennis squeezes her shoulder-blades. "Come upstairs?"

She doesn't reply but she turns and follows him through the door of the building, into the lift and into his flat. He goes into the kitchen and sets the kettle on the stove, and she leans against his table and crosses her arms. "Look, Dennis, whatever you just heard..."

She falls silent when he turns to look at her. His expression is even; he doesn't look hurt or tense or upset. "Do you really think that I could ever love a job—a stupid _job_, Gabrielle—more than I love you?"

"That's not what I meant." She's looking at her feet. "I meant that the job and everything could...I don't know, it could last longer than us. You have family in England, you have friends. All of that might mean more than..." she waves her hands in the air, "this."

He steps across the small space between the stove and the table and takes her hands in his. "Merlin, Gabby." He shakes his head. "You don't think we'll last?"

"It's not," she trails off, then raises her burning eyes to his. "_I _think we will. I've never seen how two people could possibly believe they could be together longer than a year, but when I met you I thought that maybe that could happen, maybe I could be happy with you, maybe I could love you, maybe we could last a long time, maybe we could be like Fleur and Bill and everyone else in the world. But it's not up to me." She drops her eyes. "Of course, part of it is, but I've decided." She pulls her hands from his and sticks them in her pockets. "I love you, but I refuse to stand in your way."

He's touching her again, his fingers on her jaw and his lips on her lips. She's too surprised to do anything but fall into the desperate familiarity of it. "I love you, too, Gabrielle," he breathes when he pulls away. "And I hate that you say it like that, that you believe you could possibly stand in my way."

Gabrielle leans into him, too tired of standing alone. "You're working at a pastry shop, Dennis, and you can design _wands_. Harry's offering you one of the most sought-after jobs in the Ministry. Isn't that career important to you?"

"That's what I've been thinking about since last night. They need wandmakers here, too. There are wand shops everywhere, and I could do it. The reason I left the place I was apprenticed, the reason Harry offered me that job, was because I felt trapped by it, because the man I was apprenticed to wouldn't give me any opportunities. It might be different here. And if it isn't, then at least I'm happy without work." He pulls away to look down at her. "In London, work was my life; here it isn't. And that is healthier, and yes, it has a lot to do with you, but for the first time I see myself as having some sort of future, one where things work out all right for me. And it won't be easy but I think it'll be good. If you want to try."

She pulls away. "Why the fuck did you run off yesterday, then?"

"Because I was afraid that you would tell me to go, and I hadn't built up enough of a defence as to why I have to stay. Apparently I shouldn't have worried."

She punches him, a light fist to his stomach. "Merlin, you idiot. You made me worry for nothing."

"I'm sorry. Can you forgive me?"

She laughs and turns, crossing the room to the door into his bedroom. She collapses on his bed and calls, "Only because you've promised you're not leaving."

He's beside her in a second, and she rolls over to face him. "I would have missed you."

Dennis smiles. "I wouldn't have been able to make it. I'd have been back in your flat before I even got through my first day at work."

"It's decided. We're never gonna do that splitting up thing, then."

"Seems like splitting up would be a bad idea to me."

"Good." Gabrielle kisses him. "I think so, too."

The next night Martine tells Nicolas that Dennis and Gabrielle's sickening hand-holding is all her doing; two days later Dennis tells Harry that France has too much to offer, and Gabrielle decides that people don't necessarily ruin everything. Sometimes they just make it a little bit better.

**A/N:** I have no idea how to feel about this, but I hope you all liked it! It's a little different to be writing them in a relationship, but I hope it ended up okay!  
>I'm sorry it's been so long between updates, as well, life has been rather crazy lately. Thank you for reading, and I appreciate reviews!<p> 


	7. pansy and louis

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Harry Potter_. Also, this is cross-gen.

Pairing: PansyParkinson + Louis Weasley  
><span>For<span>: WeatherWatch  
><span>Prompts<span>: compulsive liar, patisserie

:::

it's pathological, the way you lie  
>"Evil is just a point of view." – Cardinal Richelieu, <em>Three Musketeers<em> (Film, 2011)

I was not expecting to meet Potter spawn when I entered the new potions shop in Knockturn Alley. I mean, who would expect to find any of the saviour's babies down in that unsavoury slum?

But I stepped inside and there she was—Lily Potter, red hair, blue eyes, up to her elbows in a barrel of beetle eyes. She blew a few strands of hair out of her face and asked, "May I help you?"

I had just turned forty-six the week before, and I'd decided to go in there for some sort of anti-aging potion, something to smooth out the creases in my skin and disguise the weight hanging around my hips. But I couldn't reveal my weaknesses to a Potter—after all, I still suffered in some circles for that time when I offered Lily Potter's father to the crazy bastard who wanted to rule the world.

I remained silent for too long. Lily pulled her arms out of the barrel, a bracelet dripping beetle eyes hooked on one finger. "I dropped it in there," she explained, wiping her hands on the apron around her waist. "Now, did you need something in particular, or are you just looking?"

"You're Lily Potter. What're you doing down here?"

Lily still sometimes tells me that I have less tact than a shit-flinging baboon. I was worse back then.

"You're Pansy Parkinson and I am selling potions. Do you need something?" Lily's tone was civil. I knew that she had been in Slytherin and from what I'd heard through the grapevine—namely Draco's son and Theo's and Blaise's hordes—she'd made a better one than any of us.

"No," I lied. "I don't need a thing."

Lily nodded. "Let me know if I can help."

I lingered, looking at the shelves of glass vials and boxed ingredients until I felt that Lily wouldn't judge me if I left. When I did, pushing the door open and letting blistering cold air into the close, heavily-scented room, Lily called, "Have a nice afternoon." As if I had been any normal customer in any normal shop. I decided she might be all right, even if the rest of her family had always been too pure for me.

I waited a few weeks before I went back. I tried exercising, running in the morning and walking at night. I put cold cream on my face before I went to bed and sliced cucumbers over my eyelids on lazy afternoons. But I still cringed when I glanced in the mirror. Lines on my forehead, creases at the corners of my eyes; my dark hair had lost its lustre, my stomach stuck out in the tops I'd bought to hide my weight. My body was sagging in on itself, and if I didn't have that—the illusion of self-confidence built out of prominent cleavage and a straight spine, seductive hips and bitten lips—then I didn't have a currency. I would go the way my mother had gone: bulging and bitter to the grave.

Friends of mine went to Lily's shop between my first and second visits, and they told me she was discreet and talented. I didn't know why they'd needed her assistance but I trusted them, and so I took the left turn out of Diagon Alley into Knockturn halfway through January and opened the door to the shop to find that people filled the spaces between the shelves, holding baskets of glittering potions.

Lily stood behind the till, ringing up a swarm of customers. I wandered through the store until I found the cosmetics section. I took one of each of the anti-aging products, all of them bottled in curvy glass-stoppered vials, and got into the queue. When I set the basket on the counter in front of Lily, she entered the numbers without hesitating.

She handed me my change, and then she glanced behind me, and said in a soft voice, "I have something else, too, if you'd like to try..."

I blinked. "What?"

"Another anti-aging sort of product. It's temporary, but good. If you're interested." She didn't sound critical.

"Of course I am." I looked at her eagerly. "Where is it?"

"Can you come back at closing? I'll explain it to you then." Lily was already smiling at the person behind me.

I considered not showing up, but then eight o'clock rolled around and I found myself back at Lily's shop, twisting my hands at my waist. I knew that it was stupid. I was concerned about spending time with a girl who was maybe eighteen. But she had accomplished so much more than I had. And she was a Potter—she may have been setting a trap for an old family enemy.

I entered the shop anyway, and Lily glanced up from counting galleons at the till. "Brilliant, you've come! I've got the potion in the back." She led me through a curtain to the back of the shop, where she gestured for me to sit on a cushioned stool while she rummaged in a cupboard. But she didn't come out with a vial. Instead, she held a dark coloured wood case, with a silver clasp and a tiny lock. She slipped a key from the table and unlocked the box, flipping it open to show me the silver container nestled on black velvet beside a glass tube full of what looked like blonde hairs.

"What...?" I asked, although I was starting to get some idea.

She had a feral grin. "Polyjuice Potion."

"That's illegal," I pointed out.

"It is," Lily said. "It also tastes foul. But," she placed the box on the table in front of me, "if you want to go out and have some fun, but you don't want to worry about someone knowing you, or about looking your best, it is perfect. Also, your intentions are mostly innocent. In a general sense." She lowered her voice. "I've used it."

"Get sick of being famous, sometimes?" I asked, lifting the tube from the velvet and shaking it so the hairs twisted around each other. I'd always wondered what it would be like to be blonde.

"It is a bitch," Lily said. "Those are a Muggle's hair—I had Albus grab a handful off of her at a pub a few weeks ago. It'll last you a bit. She was pretty—my brother James was drooling over her. I think she was around twenty or so."

I didn't really think before I said, "I'll take it."

Lily grinned. "Brilliant. Let me know if you have any problems with it. I've modified the potion, so one dose should last you five hours. Beyond that, you're playing with fire."

"Fine," I told her.

"I've included all the important information in this pamphlet." Lily pulled down at a tab in the lid of the container and showed me the papers hidden there. I nodded and slid seven galleons across the table as she locked the box and handed me the key.

"Have fun," Lily called as I slipped from the shop, the box dangling from a bag on my wrist.

"I plan to," I called back.

I did not allow myself to go out that night. But the next night I couldn't stand the wait any longer. At nine o'clock I pulled the potion from the box and poured a little into a tumbler. I dropped a single blonde hair in and waited as the potion bubbled green up around the sides of the glass. I took it like a shot, straight to the back of the throat, and everything constricted as it settled in my stomach. For a moment I thought that Potter may have tricked me. Maybe the potion was wrong or the hair was wrong or she'd just wanted to poison me all along.

But then I felt myself changing, my clothes felt bigger, my jeans slipping down a little, my shirt dropping from one shoulder, both of my bra-straps down onto my upper arms. My hair grew into my line of vision, blonde and shining. I tugged at the waistband on my jeans and sent them to the floor. My pants followed, and then my shirt and bra. I stepped away from the pile of clothes and stood in front of the one full-length mirror in my flat, the one I usually avoided.

I stared. I moved closer to the reflection. The girl in the mirror was not just pretty, as Potter had described her. She was gorgeous. Her hair—my hair—was curly and long, long enough to almost conceal my new breasts—only a size B, maybe, but God, they didn't sag at all—and my hair was several shades of blonde, depending on where the light hit. She—I—had soft skin everywhere. I ran a hand up over my arms, up to my elbows, where I was usually met with near-snakeskin-dryness, and it was all just soft. My legs were long but not overlong, and my hips jutted just a little, but not so I looked too thin. My ribs weren't visible, but my belly wasn't noticeable and I turned to find that I had _the_ perfect bum.

"Fuck, Lily, you're a genius," I said to the empty air.

A part of me just wanted to walk outside naked, to revel being this comfortable in my skin, but I figured that that probably would have negative consequences. I searched through my closet for something that wouldn't look oversized on this new young body, and I found nothing but an old red jumper. I tugged it over my head and glanced in the mirror. It hung around me, but it didn't look bad. Luckily this Muggle's feet were only a little smaller than mine, and I pulled silver stilettos I hadn't been able to wear since I twisted my ankle eight months before. I looked in the mirror and grinned at myself. It was time to go.

I started off in a wizarding club a few blocks from my flat. I could feel people's eyes on me as I wound my way through the crowd, and I threw my hair over my shoulder so the lights turned it multi-coloured. I finally felt alive. I glanced at the watch around my wrist, decided to give myself three and a half hours, and ordered a drink.

An hour later I was dancing, my hands running along the back of a bloke with dark hair and unfamiliar eyes and skin at least a decade younger than my own. But not younger than that me. That me was the perfect match for him, and I hooked a finger through the belt loop on his jeans and kissed his jaw, parting my lips so my teeth grazed against the stubble there and his hand tightened on my waist.

"Yeah?" he asked.

I nodded and we found our way to the restroom, kicked some girl out of the handicapped stall, and I was backed against the tiles. I hadn't felt this much in years, and when I slipped away from him he grabbed my hand. "Can I see you again?" he asked. His voice was slurred; he probably wouldn't remember whether I had blue or brown eyes in the morning.

Hell, I wasn't sure whether I had blue or brown eyes at that moment.

"Maybe." I left.

I spent my days working in an obscure department of the Ministry, my nights at clubs and pubs across London. I had a chain of one night stands as long as the blonde girl's hair, and at the end of two weeks I was starting to worry about whether or not I'd have enough potion to last me as long as I needed it. I considered going to see Lily, but then I wandered into a pub in the middle of London a few weeks after our first meeting to find her leaning against the bar, a glass of beer in her hand.

She waved at me. "Potter," I said, resting my elbows on the bar beside her. "How are you?"

"All right." She glanced around. "I'm here with my brothers. We're meant to be bonding, but they've abandoned me for girls." She grinned at me. "How do you like the potion?"

"It's brilliant, it really is." I skimmed my hands through my hair. "I mean, Merlin, who'd have thought I could look like _this_?"

Lily smirked. "What's the point in having magic if we can't get it to do what we want it to?"

"Spoken like a true Slytherin." I grinned back. "I was wondering, though, you don't happen to have any more hairs, do you? And potion? I've still got some left," I hurried to explain, at the expression on her face, "I just wanted to know whether I should be savouring this."

"You should always savour it," Lily said. "But I am brewing another batch of potion, and James has struck up a _something_ with the Muggle, so I think I can get some more hair for you. Come by the shop next week."

"Of course."

Lily drank the rest of her beer in one long swig and grabbed my hand. "Come dance," she demanded.

I didn't go home with anyone that night, but on our way to the Apparation space, Lily said, "I'll owl you next time I go out. You're fun," and disappeared with a brilliant smile. It seemed that I had inadvertently become friends with the Potter spawn. It was strange that I didn't mind.

Lily owled me two nights later, and I met her on the crowded pavement outside a club. "Hey!" she burst, grabbing onto my hand and pulling me towards a group of people, most of whom had red hair and all of whom were around Lily's age. "Guys, this is Viola." I blinked at the name change, but Lily continued without pausing, "Vi, this is Hugo," a boy with curly red hair, "Fred," dark skin, red hair, "Rose," skinny, more ginger than the others, "Louis," the only blond of the group, cripplingly attractive, "and Lucy," red hair, but I would have killed to look like her when I was in school.

"Charmed," I said, offering a wave as Lily locked her hand around my wrist again.

"Now that you're here, we can all go in. Come on." She led us through the crowd awaiting entrance and smiled at the bouncer at the door.

He nodded. "Potter," he growled, unhooking the velvet rope for us. Apparently being famous had its perks. Or maybe just being Lily.

We were all dancing on the floor twenty minutes later, the world a little looser around us; strangers kept swaying in and out of our group and I hadn't felt that many hands on my skin in ages. At one point I landed against Louis's chest, and his hands fastened on my hips. I would have believed it was an accident, except that his lips quirked in a smirk and he said, just loud enough for me to hear him in the overwhelming noise of the club, "I've been trying to get at you all night. Lily always knows the most delightful people." He sounded sardonic; I supposed his definition of "delightful" was slightly darker than most people's.

I pressed my hips against his and he caught my grin with his lips.

"Vi." Lily's hand grabbed on to my wrist some time later, in the middle of another song spent with my skin against Louis's. "Vi," she said again, her voice reaching frantic levels. "Come _on_."

I scowled at Louis. "Sorry, boy, I've got to go. I'll see you."

He let go of me, his hands brushing through my hair as Lily pulled me away. She pushed me out of the club and a few feet down the street and then said, "Sorry, it's just that you've been out for almost five hours and I didn't want—"

"Oh, Merlin." I had forgotten. That hadn't happened before, I'd always remembered that my body was borrowed, that I just had beauty on a short lease. "Fuck. Thank you."

"Yeah," she said. "So you should probably get going." And then she grinned. "You sure made an impression on Louis."

I shrugged. "He's..."

"Part veela. And used to getting his way." She shook her head. "We'll see where this goes. Anyway, let me know if you want to get brunch or something tomorrow. I'll be around."

"Sure." I glanced at my hand. Soon I'd have different fingerprints. "I'll message you." And then I gripped the wand in my pocket and Disapparated.

Lily and I met in a café before noon the next day. I didn't bother taking potion; I was on my lunch break, and besides, Lily knew me.

"So," Lily leaned over her coffee mug and steam blew up across her eyes. "Louis's already asking me where I met you. I told him you're taking potions lessons from me—I offer them at the shop, so it's not that far-fetched."

"Right." I stirred cream into my coffee. "And why does he care? I would have thought that being part-veela, he's all for one night stands. Not that we did anything other than kiss."

Lily shrugged. "Apparently you've entranced him. I'd accuse you of using a love potion, but I know that's not your style."

I laughed. "Why would I want to make a twenty year-old golden boy fall in love with me?"

"Twenty-three," she corrected. "And he's not exactly a golden boy. Kind of a douche, actually." She smirked. "You guys will get along brilliantly."

I narrowed my eyes. "Are you plotting something?"

She shook her head. "No, no, I promise. It's just, he's asked me to invite you along the next time we all go out. You'll come, won't you?"

"Of course."

Three more nights spent dancing with Louis and I was beyond intrigued. The man was too much. His eyes were too grey, his hair too blond, too shiny, too straight, his nose too long, his lips too strong. His blood must have been made of lightning because his touches left sparks and burns on my skin. I fled the clubs reluctantly, only when Lily grabbed onto my hands or shoulders, hissing words that sounded a lot angrier than she ever seemed in the daytime. I always changed back to my older self a few minutes after I arrived home, and I watched as all evidence of Louis disappeared from my body. Love bites along my neck, red marks on my hips, bitten lips—they all faded into the less elastic skin of a woman who should have spent her nights reading books in bed.

A few weeks after I first met Louis, Lily arrived at my flat. She barrelled through the door and poured herself a glass of merlot from the bottle on the counter and then turned to face me, her eyes pinning me to the door. "I thought it was funny. I was very wrong."

"About what?" I brushed some greying strands of dark hair from my eyes. Lily gulped the wine.

"You. You and Louis. He's asked me for your address, he wants to take you out for a proper date." She shook her head. "I thought you'd both get all that horniness out of your systems and maybe someday if Louis ever did something bastardly to me I could tell him, 'Oh, you know my friend Viola? She's actually Pansy Parkinson. Yeah, she's brilliant, but a bit old for you, don't you think?' And Merlin, can you imagine the look on his face? He'd be so—" and then Lily cut off, because she'd noticed the expression on mine. "Oh, fuck, that sounded really bitchy didn't it. Pansy, look." She set the wine glass down on my counter and crossed the room to stand in front of me. "I don't judge you because of what happened during the War or because of how you act now, I swear. I like you. I really do, I think you're an awesome person and I would say you're one of my closest friends," that was news, "it's just...well, Louis doesn't _know_. And he's horribly shallow, you know. So it would...I mean, he _likes_ you. He genuinely likes your personality, which is where the problem is, because I didn't expect him to ever look beyond how pretty that Muggle chick is to see how absolutely brilliant _you_ are. But he has." She ran out of air and sucked in a breath, "And that's never happened before and now I don't know what to do."

"Lily, honestly, it's not that dire. Look, we've barely even talked. He's probably stuck on how pretty 'that Muggle chick' is. I'll go out to dinner with him, once, and then he'll see how uninteresting _I_ am, and everything will be fine." Although that meant that after that dinner I would need to stop seeing him. Something knotted in my gut. It seemed like that would be difficult.

"I don't think that's a good idea." Lily shook her head. "No, no, no, I'm certain it's a very bad idea. Because he _isn't_ just attracted to that Muggle girl; Louis doesn't do dates. He flirts and he fucks."

"He doesn't even know what I'm like, though. I promise it'll work out okay." I held out my pinkie finger, and she narrowed her eyes at it.

"We're not five, Pansy. I think it's a really awful idea."

I dropped my hand. "I'll behave really horribly. I'll act like I did when I was a teenager. He'll lose all interest in me and you can stop worrying. How's that?"

Lily rubbed her hand across her eyes. "Still doesn't sound ideal. This isn't what I intended when I gave you the potion."

"Obviously, it isn't."

She stayed silent for a few moments and then nodded. "Well, fine. I'll tell Louis to owl you. If it all goes to hell, though, feel free to blame me."

I shook my head. "I'm the crazy vain one. You just provided the means."

"Exactly." Lily sighed. "Well, anyway, are you going out tonight?"

"No. I was thinking of making something chocolatey and drinking a lot of wine and watching a Muggle film."

"That sounds perfect. You mind if I join you?"

"Not at all." I tossed her a cookbook from the counter. "Pick something yummy."

The next morning I awoke to an owl tapping against the window in my bedroom. I rolled out of bed and let it in, rubbing my wrists across my eyes as it dropped an envelope on my pillow and fluttered out to the kitchen. I picked up the letter and followed the bird. The owl was sitting on the rim of a half-full glass of merlot, dipping its beak into the wine and hooting in contentment.

"Louis'll kill me if I turn you into a wino." I hit the tap and ran some water into a shallow dish, setting it on the counter while tugging the glass from beneath the owl's talons. "Drink that." He glared at me for a moment before dropping his beak into the pool of water, dyeing it a light red colour with tendrils of wine.

I poured the wine down the drain and then slit the envelope, tugging out Louis's note.

_Hey, Vi,  
>I was wondering if you'd be interested in going out to dinner tonight. I could pick you up around six? I was thinking French food.<br>__You can send a note back with Eros.  
><em>_Hope to see you soon!  
><em>_Louis_

I scribbled _Yes, please. I can meet you at the restaurant_ on the back of the note and waited for Eros (that cocky bastard) to finish his drink.

"All set, birdy?" I tied the note to the owl's leg and he hopped on the counter a few times before spreading his wings and taking off, flying back through my open bedroom door to the window.

Louis sent me the restaurant's address and I took the polyjuice potion a few minutes before I was set to leave. I poured a little into a flask and tucked it in my purse, just in case—there should not have been a _just in case_, not if I accomplished my supposed mission to gross Louis out, but I wanted to be prepared.

He met me at the door to the restaurant, dressed in a collared shirt and slacks and looking like he could kill me with prettiness. He took my thin wrist and led me through the door into the dimly lit restaurant. He didn't stop touching me until we sat down at a candle-glowing table, and then he ran his foot down my shin. I shivered.

"All right?" he asked, glancing at the menu before setting it aside and focusing his attention on me.

"Fine." I was just thinking about how to end it with you. Just thinking about how you'd be looking at me if I were myself, instead of this Muggle. Just thinking about how this may be my last night _as_ this Muggle.

I didn't say any of that, obviously. I offered him a smile and read through the menu twice.

"So I suppose Lily's told you something about me."

I glanced up from the menu, saw the expectation on his face, and shrugged. "That you're part veela and a bit conceited."

He flinched. "And you still agreed to come out with me?"

"What has Lily told you about me?"

"Not much," he said. Damn. Lily wasn't going to make this easy.

"Well, I'm egotistical and a bit of a bitch as well, so I couldn't really judge you. At least you have reason to be conceited."

He grinned. He was not supposed to grin. He was supposed to find self-deprecation unattractive. "Thank you," he said. Fuck, Louis.

"So, what do you do?" Prying. Prying was considered bad, right?

"I'm a broomstick technician." I couldn't keep the smirk from my lips. He rolled his eyes. "Which means that I ensure that broomsticks don't malfunction in the air, and when they do, I charm them right again. Stop grinning like that. It's a perfectly respectable job."

I bit my lip into submission and nodded. "It is, it is, you're right. I'm just a secretary at the Ministry, so I have no room to talk."

"Oh? What department do you work in?"

"I float around a bit." I tore the bread into pieces.

"Did you go to Hogwarts? I don't remember you."

I considered this. "I was quiet. Didn't really do too much."

"Still, you're what, three years below me?" My heart stuttered. I wished. "I would think I'd have seen you. What house were you in?"

"Slytherin."

"Really?" He narrowed his eyes. "With Lily?"

"Well, I was a few years above her. I didn't know her until after. Like I said, I really didn't do too much outside of classes."

"Sounds boring."

I shrugged. "It could have been worse." It could have been the way it was, with war and hate and mistakes.

"I suppose."

"Were you in Ravenclaw?"

He shook his head. "Merlin, no. Where would you get that idea?"

He looked like the Ravenclaws of my day, cocky and shiny and perfect.

"I was in Gryffindor," he explained.

Strange. "And you don't hate me for being in Slytherin?"

He shrugged. "House rivalries always bored me. There was no point to them in school, there's no point to them now. Besides, if I judged Slytherins I'd have Lily plaguing me all the time."

"Good point." I smiled. And then remembered I was supposed to make him hate me. "So what do you do for fun, aside from picking up your little cousin's friends at clubs?"

He rolled his eyes. "You were a special case. I hope Lily's told you that."

Impossible. Louis was impossible. The thought of going further, of changing my personality completely, starting with derision of Muggles and ending with derision of half-bloods, seemed impossible. So I ran my finger along the top of the flask in my bag and smiled, said, "She did. I was just teasing."

"Good." He stretched, cut into his food, and grinned at me. I gave up completely.

I went to the restroom and took a swig from the flask while Louis paid the bill, and when I arrived back at the table he took my hand and said, "Come home with me?" and I couldn't say no. I couldn't resist his eyes and his smile and his idiotic affection for me. Or for this me.

He Apparated us from the alley behind the restaurant, and we landed beside his bed. "Subtle," I muttered, but he just smirked against my lips and tugged at the neck of my dress.

"Please," he said.

"Merlin, Louis, has anyone ever refused you?" I asked, my fingers fast at the buttons of his shirt.

"Never. But I wouldn't be surprised if you did." His lips were on my neck and I could barely make out the words. "You're different than all the others."

I felt a slightly sick feeling in my gut, but I shoved it aside. "Better?" I prompted.

"Fuck, yes."

We didn't say anything else for quite some time, other than quick exhalations of words that had little meaning and names that meant too much.

He fell beside me, our legs still tangled together on top of his duvet, and I turned to press my face against the freckled skin of his shoulder. I kissed him there four times, and then I slowly inched my legs away from his.

"I need to go, Louis."

He caught at my arms before I could slide all the way off the mattress. "No, Vi, stay. We can have a lie in tomorrow, I'll make breakfast and coffee, it'll be...it'll be nice."

I shook my head. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I've got to go see my parents," they were dead, stretching the lies so far, "early tomorrow. I can't stay."

He fell back against the pillow. "Next time?"

Never again, I told myself as I told him, "Of course."

But it did happen again. He owled me the next morning, and three days after that, and then I gave in and went to dinner with him. I had thought up an excuse this time, and left him only an hour after sex. I gave up lying to myself, though. Three weeks of being Louis's _something_ and I could no longer tell myself I wanted it temporarily. I wanted it for real.

And I couldn't have it.

Lily was sitting on the sofa in my living room when I Apparated in front of the empty fireplace after the eighth time I'd fallen into Louis's bed. She glared at me as I collapsed onto the armchair, pulling my knees up to my chin and brushing my hair forward over the strap of my dress.

"This needs to end. It's going to hurt you and Louis more if you keep it going." I felt young and unbearably confused. Lily's expression shifted to pity. "I'm sorry, Pansy. If I had known this was going to happen, I never would have offered you the potion."

I thought about that. About spending the last four months the way I had spent the last twenty years. "I don't regret it," I told her. "I just hate having to end it."

She was silent for a few moments, and then nodded. "You know it does, though."

"I'll just give it up. Take the potion away from me, Lily. Don't let me do it ever again, and he won't see me, and it'll be fine."

"But," Lily stared at me, "Merlin, I'm so sorry, Pansy. You like him, don't you?"

"Of course I do. It'd be difficult not to. But it's impossible. At least this way, I had some of him, you know?"

"I'm terribly sorry."

"I know." I stood and left the living room, tugged out the top drawer in my desk and pulled out the wooden box. I ran a hand over the smooth lid and returned it to Lily. "Just don't," Merlin I sounded pathetic, "Just, don't abandon me too."

Lily smiled at me. It was sad, but there. "I meant it when I said you're one of my closest friends, Pansy. And I like you better when you're not blonde."

I rolled my eyes. "Lies." She looked about to speak again, but I cut in. "Enough sappiness. I am going to sleep, and you are going to put that somewhere that I will never, ever find it again."

"Deal." Lily Disapparated before I could ask her to be nice to Louis for me. Probably a good thing—too much sappiness.

Life turned boring again. I went to work, came home, made myself increasingly less-fattening meals, noticed more flaws in my body, met Lily for meals and drinks, met older friends for drinks, and slept. Monotony became synonymous for existence, again, and I found myself dreaming about the freedom Lily's potion had afforded me. Before I fell in love with her cousin.

After three weeks of boredom Lily dragged me to a patisserie before nine on a Saturday morning.

"I hate this," I informed her, tearing a croissant into pieces. "Life is just...not fun."

"Merlin, you're making me dread getting older." Lily sighed. "Why don't you go out and meet somebody. Like a _man_." She lowered her voice and raised her eyebrows at me.

I ran my fingers through my hair, catching at dark strands. "Because have you seen your cousin? He's ruined me."

Lily dragged a finger through a spot of jam on the table. She glanced at it, made a face, and wiped it on her napkin. "Get over him. Sleep with somebody else. I've faith in you."

"You say."

The door to the pastry shop chimed and Lily looked up. Her eyes widened a fraction and I glanced over my shoulder to see Louis crossing the room toward us, his eyes blazing grey and his skin flushed. He swung a chair around from an adjacent table and straddled it, resting his arms on the back and pinning Lily with a glare that sent my skin sizzling.

"Lily," he growled. "I have a question."

"Sure." Lily shot me a sympathetic look, but Louis didn't even look at me.

I started to push my chair out, wanting to get away, when he said, "I went over to James's this morning to return something he had lent me. And guess who was drinking coffee in his kitchen. Wearing one of his shirts."

"Oh, fuck." Lily dropped her face into her hands.

"Yeah. Except, strange thing, he kept calling her Lonnie. And when he introduced her he said she was a student at King's College. Which is a Muggle university. So I got out of there pretty damn quick and now I want to know, who the fuck have I been pining over?"

I lowered my head and stared at my hands. Fuck _everything_.

Lily was going to lie, and I knew I was not going to like whatever lie she told, but it still hurt when she said, "Someone who came into my shop a few times. I gave her polyjuice potion and Albus had gotten me some of Lonnie's hairs and wow," Lily was still looking at the table, "this is incredibly awkward, isn't it?"

"Incredibly _awkward_?" Louis was hissing, evidently having difficulty keeping his voice below a yell. "What the actual _fuck_, Lily? I now know what James's Muggle girlfriend looks like naked and I fell in l—I was attracted to a woman I don't even _know_. I mean, I've done some pretty despicable things in the past, but that...Merlin, _that _is worse than anything I've ever done. You played with me. You are not meant to do that, Lily."

"I'm sorry," Lily began. "I'm really, really sorry."

"This time, sorry doesn't even begin to cover it." He stood, flipped the chair around back to the table, and then he glanced at me. I refused to look up at him.

"Sorry," he muttered to me, evidently thinking he'd interrupted a meeting between Lily and myself, "that couldn't wait." And then he left, leaving waves of cold air behind him.

"We've made such a mess of things," I said.

Lily looked up at me, her eyes full of self-loathing. "_I've_ made a mess of things. You fell for him, too. And now I've destroyed you both."

"Look," I said, "Look at me, Lily. I'm still here, I'm still whole. You didn't destroy me, and I'm sure Louis will be okay, too. Soon."

"You think?" she asked. "I don't know."

"I do," I promised, even though I had no real idea. I still hurt, and I had been the reason for all of this. He had been blindsided. I couldn't imagine how he felt.

Lily spent much of the next three weeks in my flat, When she wasn't at work, she was sprawled on my sofa or baking something in my stove. I didn't mind much; I was working a lot more than usual and I always enjoyed her company, but I was starting to worry. Louis had told the rest of her family what she'd (we'd) done, and none of her cousins were talking to her; Albus had apparently smooth-talked his way out of ostracism for his part in it, and James was livid.

At the beginning of the third week, I came into my living room after a long day at the Ministry and informed her: "You are getting up and going out. I'll come if you need company, but you desperately need to move. I won't let you throw away your life over a stupid mistake."

"Hypocrite," Lily mumbled into my area rug.

"I fucked up my life at seventeen and then I stopped trying. I am telling you that is not the way to go."

"I'm not seventeen," she pouted.

"You are nineteen and you are acting like you're five. Get up, go home, get dressed, and meet me at the club down by the Thames. The one we went to that time that Louis ended up vomiting off the bridge."

"Pleasant memory," she muttered.

"Not so much," I agreed. "But sort of amusing?"

"Sort of." She rolled to her feet and snagged her wand from the table by the couch. "Fine. I'll see you there at eleven."

"Good."

I started getting ready at nine, and by the time I was dressed in jeans and an age-appropriate top and had straightened my hair and applied sensible makeup, I felt even older than I had before.

"Ancient," I told my reflection.

My reflection agreed. She scowled at me and lines appeared on her cheeks and her forehead. My being there was probably not going to help Lily at all, but she wouldn't have gone if I had left her alone.

Lily still looked unhappy when I found her leaning against the building a few feet away from the door. "All right?" I asked her.

"Been better, been worse." She forced a smile. "You look fine. Stop fidgeting."

We stood watching people enter the club for a few minutes and I finally nodded, "Okay, if we're going to do it, might as well jump in."

"Right." Lily straightened her back and followed me through the crowd. We got drinks at the bar, and Lily was soon snatched up by some brown-haired bloke. I lingered by the bar and reminded myself that I looked as old as I was.

I caught sight of a group of familiar faces at the other end and turned my face away before I remembered that this conglomeration of Weasleys wouldn't know me, or if they did, they'd know me as Pansy.

I took another drink, reminded myself that it was mostly my fault that Lily was exiled and therefore had to stay in case she needed moral support, and that it seemed like she would be leaving with this bloke shortly and then I could make my escape.

Lily caught my eye five minutes later and waved as the bloke took her hand and led her from the floor, and I sighed in relief and dropped my empty glass on the beer-slicked bar behind me. I pushed away from the stool I had been half-sitting on and was about to flee when a familiar—and Merlin, it shouldn't have been—hand fastened around my wrist.

"Do I know you?" Louis was drunk and slurring. And endearing. Too fucking endearing.

"You're Lily Potter's cousin, right?" That worked. He dropped my wrist like I'd burned him. "I'm friends with her—you interrupted our breakfast a few weeks ago?"

"Oh." He stared at me, his eyes sliding around my face. "You are friends with Lil-Lily? Why?"

"Because we all make mistakes. And I've made more than she has."

He shook his head. "That doesn't make sense. You are confusing."

I shrugged. "I was just about to leave," want to come with me, "so maybe I'll see you."

"There's another word," he said. "Like confusing. But better."

"Perplexing?" I suggested, even though I should have been home by then.

"Too much. Lily would know." He pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. "Lily's a bitch."

"I've been told you're a bastard."

He snorted. "Not as much of one. You don't even know."

"I know," I told him. "And I really do need to go."

"Wait." He grabbed onto the hem of my shirt, fingers clutching at woven fabric. "I really think I _know_ you, though. More than just as Lily's friend. You know?"

"Louis," I bit my lip. Tell him, don't tell him, he was drunk, he wouldn't remember, did I want him to remember, everything sucked. "If you still want to know..." I tugged my wand from the pocket of my jeans and charmed my address onto his palm, "go there when you're sober."

He squinted at his hand. "Okay. Wait, what's your name?"

I thought. "Pansy."

"As in Parkinson? Awesome. You're a fucking legend."

I squeezed my eyes shut. "I'm a horrible person. Don't."

"Not," he said.

I gripped my wand and Disapparated before he could say anything else. I landed on my bed and pressed my face into my pillow and breathed deeply. I had made poor decisions.

I woke up the next morning to too bright sunlight and too cherry an alarm. I rolled out of bed, showered, and dressed in jeans and a jumper. I alternated between hoping that Louis wouldn't come and hoping that he would for the first five hours, and then around three I started feeling disappointed that he hadn't.

Lily sent me an owl saying that she was going out with her new boy—whose name was apparently Oliver—and that she was grateful to me for going with her the night before, and that we should get breakfast, and I realised that with no moping Lily around, I had nothing to take my mind off of the sight of Louis the night before and how boring life was.

I was just settling down to a dinner of cheesy pasta and red wine—everyone has their vices—when the buzzer to my door sounded. I tried not to think; I hoped it was Louis and I also hoped it was Theo or Draco or Daphne, someone innocuous and easy.

I opened the door to find blond hair and familiar, shaking hands. "Hi, Louis." I stepped aside. He came in without saying anything and began pacing around the living room.

"I shouldn't have given you my address. I'm sorry," I said after a few minutes of silence.

"Why not?"

"Because it complicates things. Horribly."

"So what I'm thinking is right, then? I've been wondering all day, why you seemed so familiar. I thought it might be because I was drunk and I'd seen you around before but...you're Viola."

I shook my head. "I took polyjuice potion because getting old sucks and I was tired and wanted change and a whole lot of other reasons—basically because I'm vain and not a good person—and it was just going to be some way to go out and have fun and then I met you and I lost track of what I was doing and I fucked everything up."

He stared. "You're not a not-good person." He bit his lip. "I mean, I liked you."

"But only because I was attractive, right? And I'm not saying that to be self-deprecating or anything but I'm twenty-three years older than you."

He tilted his head. "You're still attractive. Although I probably wouldn't have talked to you that first time if I had known how old you were, true."

"So I don't really see a point, Louis. I mean, it would have been better if you hadn't run into me last night."

"Why? Because then I'd never have known who I fell in love with?"

I pressed my palm against my neck. "Don't talk like that. You can't love me."

"But you can love me? I think you do, anyway. I thought you did."

"It's different! I'm allowed to fall for a younger guy—but you, you should be out there with someone who isn't old and evil and a bit of a compulsive liar."

"You're not evil and you're not old and I lie, too."

"Merlin, Louis, why? Why would you even want me?"

He shrugged. "Because you have seen things. Because I've never been as attracted to anyone's personality as I am to yours, because your eyes hurt to look at and your smile is lovely and you are beautiful, you _are_, even if you don't see it, but even if you weren't it wouldn't matter because I actually want to know you." He bit his lip. "I'm shallow. I never want to actually know people."

"_Merlin_, Louis." He moved closer, and I stepped away. "I cannot do this. I'm saying no."

"Why?" His shaking hands had curled into steady fists. "You had no problem when you looked like someone else, when you didn't even tell me your real name. I'm forgiving you, I want you, why are you suddenly developing a conscience _now_?"

"Because, because that felt wrong and it was, but this feels worse."

"It isn't. I promise you, it isn't."

"Look." I crossed my arms. "Can we try this another way? Can we start out being friends—like dinners and films and breakfasts friends—and maybe let it turn into something. And if it doesn't? Then can we just stay friends? Love each other's personalities?"

"That sounds stupid. Sorry, but it does."

"It's all I can offer right now. I am sorry. I'm sorry for what I did and for how I did it and for talking to you last night, and I would love to be your friend, but I can't be more."

Louis stood there in silence for a moment, then gave one nod and turned, striding out of my flat before it fully registered what he was doing. I closed my eyes and barely made it to my bed before the tears started falling.

Lily came to my flat two days later, let herself in, and told me that I looked a mess and ought to get out. "Plus, I bet your boss misses you."

"Probably, but he's an arse, so he can deal."

"Come _on_, Pan. Get _up_." She shoved something vaguely coffee-like beneath my nose and tugged at my hair. "Up up up."

"I don't _want_ to."

"Yeah, I got that. Sometimes you need to do things you don't want to do, et cetera et cetera."

I groaned and took the coffee. I sipped it while Lily opened the blinds and started talking about her new boyfriend. And then she took a non sequitur and said, "Thank you for whatever you said to Louis. He came by yesterday and said we should let bygones be bygones and he actually thanked me for introducing the two of you which means that he's figured out who you are which means that you two had a conversation which—judging from your current state—did not go well, and so I'm sorry for that, but thank you, truly."

"It went fine. I just told him he couldn't want me and he left."

"Well, that was stupid. Don't you want him?"

"It couldn't possibly last, Lily. It's easier to end it all now. I said we could be friends."

Lily snorted. "Not a good response." She tossed some clothes at me and opened the door to my bathroom, "Go shower and then I am taking you out to breakfast."

"No, thank you."

"Go." Lily left the room and I pouted for a few minutes before following her instructions.

She took me to the patisserie where Louis had first confronted her, something which should have made me suspicious but for some reason did not. I was well past suspicion when she led me to a table at the back of the shop and grinned when she saw Louis already sitting there.

"All right, darling, good luck!" She hugged me quickly, ruffled Louis's hair, and whirled between the tables and out the door before I could even think of a few good curses to hit her with.

Louis stood and gestured me toward the seat across from his. "Please," he said.

I sighed and sat down, tucking my legs beneath the chair and reaching for a packet of sugar to play with. "So?" I asked.

"I've reconsidered," he said. "We'll try it your way, since mine has somehow turned into nothing. So we'll be friends, until you believe me when I tell you I love you."

"And if I don't?"

"Then we'll just be friends." Louis shrugged. "Can't be worse than the last few months."

"Excuse me? I think you should treat being friends with me as an absolute honour."

"Oh, of course, of course." He grinned. "I apologise."

"I forgive you." I looked at him for a moment. "And I'm sorry for how this has all played out."

He nodded. "It'll be better from now on."

I nodded, "Much," I agreed.

Months later I looked in the mirror and saw evidence of Louis's touch on my skin and knew that it wouldn't disappear in an instant, the way it used to. He left sparks in my veins and they lingered; he loved me.

It had gotten better.

**A/N:** I honestly have no excuse for how long it has taken me to finish this. I hope that you all liked it!


	8. frank and alice

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Harry Potter_.

Pairing: Frank + Alice Longbottom  
><span>For<span>: Ela (waltzingvelocity)  
><span>Prompts<span>: Frank's point-of-view, Lily is Alice and Frank's best friend, 50's doo-wop

:::

she sings of lies

Frank either had too many books or he had too few hands. It took him four tries to kick open the door to the sixth year boys' dormitory, and then he had to use his back to hold it open. Someone should have warned them that school did not, in fact, get any easier after the completion of OWLs. He would have appreciated the information.

He managed to get inside the dormitory without dropping all of his books, and when he turned around to face the five four-posters he found Lily sitting cross-legged on his bed, with Sirius staring at her from James's bed. Lily was looking at Frank, her eyebrows raised as he kicked the door shut behind him. Sirius didn't turn his head.

"Lily," Frank said. "Care to give me a hand?"

She tilted her head in consideration, then pulled out her wand and cast a Levitation charm on Frank's books. He let go and she floated them over to his trunks, where they dropped in a collapsed stack, like a fallen Egyptian pyramid.

"Cheers." Frank crossed the room and threw himself down on his bed beside her, turning to face Sirius. "Hey, mate, what're you up to?"

"I was just conversing with Evans." Lily snorted. "Pardon, I was conversing _at_ Evans."

"Of course you were." Frank rolls over to look at Lily. "Why must you be so insufferable?"

"I'm not." Lily tugged at his brown hair. "Sirius was talking about the benefits of drinking Firewhiskey instead of Butterbeer. I was listening. I didn't have much to add."

"Sure." Frank grinned at Sirius, who was shaking his head. Sirius muttered something about, "Stubborn witches," and then slid from James's bed.

"I'm off. I'll see you at dinner, Longbottom, Evans."

"Adios, Black," Frank replied. Lily waved.

"So, Lil, what's going on?" Frank leaned over and tugged two chocolate frogs from his bedside table. He passed one to her and opened the other himself.

"Alice has an essay for Ancient Runes due tomorrow and Val and Olive are comparing eyelash enhancing charms so obviously I couldn't hang out with them. So here I am."

"You chose Black over Val and Ollie? They'll be so hurt."

"Technically I chose you. You were just busy moving the entire library to your bedroom."

"Please tell me you have at least a portion of the amount of homework that I do."

"I have a bit." Lily shrugged. "Have you been living in the library lately? I feel like I haven't seen you in months."

"Pretty much."

"Is Alice still there?"

He hummed a yes and closed his eyes. They sat in silence for a few minutes and then Frank said, "Lily?"

"Frank?"

"Has Alice seemed strange lately?"

Lily tilted her face to look down at him. He could see concern in her green eyes, and he wasn't sure why it was there. "Not really," she said. "Do you think she's been acting odd?"

He shrugged, his shoulders pushing against his comforter. "Just a little. I mean, today I saw her in the library and I went to sit with her, and she said, 'hey,' normally but then I tried talking to her and she just nodded and only looked up from her parchment once and when she did her face was all red and looked sort of splotchy. Not like crying-splotchy, like embarrassed or stressed or something."

"Oh." Lily nodded. "Well, like I said, she's got a paper due tomorrow. She's probably just stressed about that."

"But it isn't just today. Last week I ran into her at breakfast and I'd barely even sat down before she was running off." Lily was about to speak but Frank continued, "She didn't even finish her bacon, Lil."

"Oh," Lily repeated. "I don't know, then. She's been normal around me." Lily hopped off of Frank's bed and turned to face him. "I should probably get some work done before dinner. I'll see you."

Frank said, "Bye, Lil," but she was already out the door, on her way to Alice, he supposed. She had never been very good at lying.

But as for her reasons for lying, he couldn't really think of any. Lily was horribly honest, much of the time. He stared up at the red fabric of his canopy and tried to piece together an answer. Alice's strange behaviour plus Lily's strange behaviour equalled a big blank space in Frank's mind.

He had just begun examining a suspicious looking stain on the canopy when the door swung open yet again. He rolled over, half-expecting it to be Lily, ready to spin him into further confusion, but instead Remus entered, carrying a stack of textbooks that rivalled Frank's own.

"Have you noticed that our professors are a bit sadistic?" Remus asked, dropping the books at the foot of his bed and collapsing backwards on it in a furl of black robes.

"Just a tad," Frank agreed. "I swear McGonagall has made it her mission to suffocate us by parchment."

"And Flitwick wants to create book-avalanches in every dorm."

"Undoubtedly." Remus mimicked Frank's position, staring at his canopy in consternation. "Thinking about something?"

"Something stupid," Remus replied. "Something's bothering you, too. I feel like this whole room has been full of pent-up frustration these past few weeks, and I don't think it's all because of work."

"Alice is being weird and Lily won't tell me what's going on."

"What do you think is going on?" Remus was closer to Alice and Lily than any of the other sixth year boys, but that didn't really mean too much, considering that Lily had only just started speaking—sometimes—to James and Sirius, and Peter could barely speak around her.

"James would say it means she likes me, Sirius would tell me she's either PMSing or that I should go get some," Remus rolled his eyes, "Peter would ask me what I mean by _weird_ and I honestly do not know what to think."

"Why don't you talk to Alice?"

"Because," Frank hesitated, "what if it means nothing?"

Remus chucked a pillow across the room at him. "As Sirius would say, don't be a pansy, Longbottom. Talk to her and stop whinging."

Frank threw the pillow back across the room. "You are so helpful, Lupin."

"No, no, Sirius is. What _I_ would say is that you should probably just ask her to Hogsmeade. You clearly like her."

"Clearly?" Frank kicked at the bottom left post of his bed. "How is it clear?"

"Last night at dinner," Remus said, "you were talking to us about Defence, and then Lily and Alice sat down and you didn't say another word to us until you got back to the room after spending the whole night with them somewhere."

"I always spend more time with them than I do with you all," Frank pointed out. "No offence, or anything."

"Yes, but you never seem quite so single-minded."

"Okay, sure. But what's to say I don't like Lily?"

"Please," Remus sighed. "Lily and you act like siblings. That'd be like pairing Sirius with James."

Frank burst out laughing. "Sorry," he finally managed. "It's just, you're right. How absurd."

"Good. So you'll ask her to Hogsmeade?"

Frank sighed. "I'll talk to her. And stop whinging."

Remus rolled his eyes. "I give better advice than Sirius."

"Sirius is the one with the girlfriend, mate."

Remus narrowed his eyes. "Yeah," he agreed grudgingly.

They both returned to staring at their canopies.

"So, what was bothering you, Remus?"

"Nothing," Remus muttered. "It's fine. I'll talk to Sirius and stop whinging."

"You weren't," Frank reassured him. "Whinging, I mean."

"Hmm." Remus sat up. "I'm heading to dinner. Want to come?'

"In a minute."

Remus left the room and Frank sat up, stretching his hands behind his back. Talking to Alice used to be easy. First year they were sorted into Gryffindor one after the other, he sat next to Lily, and Alice sat next to him, and the three of them chatted excitedly all through dinner, while James and Sirius shouted across the table at each other and Remus and Peter glanced nervously around them, like they weren't exactly sure where to settle.

Frank had known immediately where to settle. He was fine, right there, between the two girls, sandwiched in black and red. He and Lily argued about everything and Alice fought both of them, asserting some reasonable middle ground that for some reason never seemed reasonable until weeks after the argument. They had done all right, though, the three of them, until Alice turned pretty or Frank turned hormonal or both.

Frank kicked his feet to the floor and left his dormitory, descending into the mostly empty common room just as Sirius, Peter, and James came bursting through the portrait hole.

"We just did a very bad thing," Peter confessed in a breath to Frank.

"What?"

"Peter means a very clever thing," Sirius put in.

"Bad and clever," James said. "You're going to have some problems tonight, mate."

"What did you do?" Frank spoke slowly, enunciating every syllable.

"It is funny, Frank," Peter promised. "And obnoxious. But mostly funny."

"Please say you didn't change the colour of Lily's freckles again."

"That's old, Longbottom, have some imagination," Sirius said, a smirk on his lips.

"My imagination doesn't exactly head in the terrifying direction that all of yours seem to." Frank ran a hand through his hair. "What've you done?"

"Well," James began, "it was intended for Evans, you know, because she always reacts so stunningly." Frank rolled his eyes.

"But," Sirius continued, "Alice got in the way, a bit."

"A bit?"

"Well, a lot," Peter supplied.

"Okay." Alice didn't take well to the other boys' practical jokes. There had been one memorial occasion when they had cursed Lily's jacket to heat by increments when worn, so by the end of a walk to Hogsmeade or around the Lake she'd be wearing a coat with the heat index of a tropical island. And they'd also cursed it so it couldn't be removed by the wearer.

They'd ended up casting the spells on Alice's jacket. And when Alice found out what they had done, they had been unable to walk straight for at least two weeks. Frank had stopped counting. Alice probably had it down to the minute, though.

"So?" Frank asked. "Are you going to end up plastered to the ceiling or just in moderate pain?"

"Plastered," James said.

Sounds suddenly erupted outside the portrait hole, and the three boys exchanged terrified glances. "Stall them," James pleaded, as he, Sirius, and Peter bolted for the staircase. Frank shook his head, but he didn't have time to respond before the boys had disappeared and Lily, Alice, and Remus stumbled through the portrait hole.

"James Potter, get your sorry arse down here," Lily shouted up the stairs. Alice had her lips rolled between her teeth, but her blue eyes burnt hard with pent-up fire. Remus stood, rubbing the back of his neck and glancing between the girls, Frank, and the staircase.

"What's happened?" Frank grabbed onto Lily's wrist before she could make it to the stairs, and she whirled to face him.

"They've cursed Alice." Lily said.

"Evidently. But how?"

"Well," Remus said, still looking sheepish, "recently Sirius has developed an affection for fifties doo-wop." Frank stared at him, uncomprehending. "You know," Remus hummed a few measures of "The Glory of Love" and Frank's eyes widened.

"Why?"

"Because he's Sirius, and slightly insane. At any rate, he cooked up this plot to make Lily sing fifties doo-wop whenever she started talking." Lily looked like a pissed-off cat. Frank let go of her. "But Sirius was laughing so hard when he cast it and Alice leaned forward at the same time and so he missed Lily and hit her instead."

"So if Alice talks," Frank began.

"She sings._ Doo-wop_. She sounds awful," Lily finished.

Frank nodded. "Right. Go ahead and kill them, Lil."

"Not that I needed your permission," Lily continued towards the stairs, "but thank you."

"How are you still alive?" Frank asked Remus.

"I was sitting with them." He nodded toward the still close-lipped Alice. "So I am not being held responsible for my mates' actions."

They could hear shouts coming down the stairs. Lily sounded beyond livid. James's voice went up octaves when he was scared.

"Well, that's lucky for you." Frank glanced at Alice, whose cheeks were red with embarrassment or rage. He'd have placed money on rage. "Do you know the counter-curse?"

"Unfortunately, no. I don't even know if Sirius does."

Lily came stomping back down the stairs, pushing Sirius in front of her. He stumbled over the last step and drew himself up in front of Alice. "I'm terribly sorry that I caught you with the curse, Alice. Are we okay?"

Alice shook her head.

"He doesn't have a counter-curse for it yet. He and Potter and Pettigrew swear that they'll work on finding one all night and that you'll be fine by tomorrow. And if you're not," Lily prodded Sirius at the base of his spine with her wand, "then they'll go to McGonagall and explain what they've done and she'll set you straight and give these three detentions until Easter."

"Until forever," Frank corrected. "Can you picture McGonagall's face?"

Alice's thin lips quirked in a smirk.

"Yes, well. Very sorry, Alice. I'm going to go work out a solution." Sirius inched around Lily's wand and started toward the stairs. He glanced over his shoulder as he reached them. "Coming, Moony?"

Remus grimaced in sympathy at Alice. "Coming." He crossed the room to follow Sirius back up to the boys' dormitory.

"Okay, well," Lily glanced at Frank and then at Alice. "I should probably go up with them and make sure they're actually working. You know what they get like when they're together." Alice nodded. "Want to join us, Frank?"

"Nah, I think I'll keep Alice company."

Lily smiled. "Perfect." She disappeared upstairs, and Frank turned to face Alice. She was red again, but this time he thought it was probably from embarrassment.

"Don't worry," he took her hand, "I like doo-wop."

She raised her eyebrows.

"I do," he swore. "Really," even though, judging from the way Remus had sounded, he really didn't.

She shook her head and tried to pull her hand away, but Frank kept a hold on her.

"Let's go for a walk. It'll be better than being in the common room when everyone gets back from dinner, and I don't feel like braving the staircase to your dormitory." Alice smirked, and Frank shook his head. "You know, I really hurt myself last time I tried to run up the slide." She shrugged. "You're not very sympathetic. And here I am, trying to be nice."

Alice squeezed his hand. Maybe she wasn't sympathetic, but she was wonderful, really. Frank led her to the portrait hole. He didn't speak as they wound their way through the corridors, up the stairs to the Transfiguration corridor. He found an abandoned classroom, a few rude drawings on the chalkboard evidence of Peeves's recent visit, and let go of Alice's hand as he shut the door.

"You can talk if you need to." Alice rolled her eyes, opened her mouth, and let off a few rhythmic but off-key notes before sealing her lips again, shutting her eyes as red—anger, he'd wager—suffused her cheeks.

"Lily'd sound worse, if the curse had hit her," Frank said. This was an undeniable fact. Lily's singing voice was somewhere around banshee.

Alice opened her eyes to glare at him. "Sorry, mean, I know. But true." He perched on the edge of a desk and watched as she struggled to keep herself from responding. "This is perfect." Luckily she caught the sarcasm in his voice. "You know what I was planning to do today?"She shook her head. "I was planning on talking to you, except by that I actually mean talking _with_ you. But no, now Potter and Pettigrew and Black," she hummed, "mostly Black, have gone and messed that up."

Alice shrugged and crossed the room to the chalkboard. Beneath one of Peeves's utterly inaccurate portrayals of human anatomy she wrote, _You can still talk. I'll listen._

"Yes, see, but that puts me on the spot and leaves you out of the loop. Just a little bit. And I'm not anxious to make you uncomfortable, but I'm also not anxious to make _myself _uncomfortable. You know?"

Alice raised her eyebrows and wrote, _this sounds serious._

"Exactly. I'd much rather you're involved, rather than just listening to everything I have to say."

Alice stuck out her lower lip in a pout. Frank sighed. "I'm not that easy."

She turned back to the board: _do you like me?_

Frank schooled his face to remain steady. "I don't want to have this conversation when you can't talk to me."

A sudden gleam came into Alice's eyes. She opened her mouth as if she was going to spill all of her feelings across the classroom floor, but instead a full range of bridges and choruses from doo-wop songs filled the air. Frank sat in the middle of the music, watching her, for five minutes. She didn't stop speaking, and dissonant notes kept swaying from her tongue. It felt like hell.

He didn't even realise that he'd hopped off the desk until he was standing in front of Alice, whose music had gained a bit of a tremor. "Please," he said softly beneath her cursed confessions, "stop."

She closed her mouth briefly, but only to smirk at him, and then opened it again. Before she could resume speaking, he leaned down and gripped the nape of her neck in his right hand, his fingers tangling in her black hair, his lips catching at her lower lip, sucking it between them so his tongue could trace a gentle line there.

He pulled away, repeated, "Please."

Alice sighed, a whisper of noise between her lips. She stood on tiptoe, her mouth pressing against his in a way that would have been chaste if he hadn't pulled her closer, his left hand settling on her waist, and his tongue begging against her silent mouth.

Alice ended up pressed against the chalkboard, Frank's hand lost in her hair and his other beneath her shirt, while her tongue mapped his mouth. This was better than words, he reasoned. At least right now, this was a compilation of the very best possibilities.

Lily and James found them, crashing through the door to the room and Lily cutting off mid-sentence.

"Oh," James said.

Frank pulled away, turned to glance at Lily and James over his shoulder. "Yes?" he asked. Alice shoved a hand against his stomach, her fingernails digging five moons into the skin there. He glanced down at her, but she was smiling with red lips. Everything was fine, okay, _good_.

"Finally," Lily said.

James was blushing. "Um. We've got the counter-curse worked out. If, you know, you want it, Alice?"

She nodded, tugged her shirt straight and slipped out of Frank's hands. He remained facing the chalkboard while James cast the Charm on Alice.

"Better?" James asked, his voice still a little hesitant.

"I think—Much," Alice said. Her throat must have been a little raw from all of the singing, because her voice was hoarser than usual.

"Brilliant. So, should I curse them all, or are you all right?" Lily asked. Frank could hear the humour in her tone. She had lost her anger somewhere in the last two hours.

"Obviously, I'm fine. Now will you two get out of here?" Alice was smiling. "Potter, tell Black I've got a gift for him, the next time I see him."

"Sure thing. And, err, sorry."

The door shut behind Lily and James, and Frank felt Alice's hands gentle on his waist.

"So, do you want to have that conversation now?" She spoke the words against his neck, her lips the barest pressure on his still-flushed skin. He turned and looked down at her.

"Do you want to?" he asked.

"You know, I think it's sort of unnecessary now."

"I think so, too." He smiled at her. "But I like hearing your voice. What was it you were saying before?"

"When I was singing, you mean?" He nodded. "Oh, I was just reciting the alphabet in every language I know it. And counting. And then I started singing Christmas carols."

Frank shook his head. "You weren't."

"I was."

He laughed. "Fuck, you're lovely."

She smiled. "But if I had had been able to talk I would have told you that if you'd stop being a pansy and opened your eyes you'd know I like you, too, and we should probably just get on with it because I do not know how much longer I can handle being around you but not being with you."

"Ah," he said. "Well, I think we've fixed that." He pulled her hips closer to his, filling the space between them. "I'd say we're together."

"I'd concur."

"Well, then," and he leaned down and kissed her. There'd be time for it to get more difficult—they'd save all the edges for later. Softer, for now. Slow, this time.

**A/N:** I've never even considered writing Frank/Alice before, so I am desperately hoping this was okay. Thank you so much for reading, and I appreciate reviews!


	9. lily luna and teddy

**Disclaimer: **I do not own _Harry Potter_.

Pairing: Lily Luna Potter + Teddy Lupin  
><span>For<span>: Maggie (mollywolly)  
><span>Prompts<span>: Professor!Teddy, red sunglasses, radio station

:::

selfishness

Teddy hates when the seventh year Slytherins earn themselves detentions. Not because whatever it is they've done is all that horrible—although usually it is—but because it requires him supervising Ris Parkinson, Bea Zabini, Conor Nott, and (fuck it all) Lily Potter for two hours. This week they'd cursed Thomas Smith's Defence book to attack him, a prank which Teddy might have overlooked if the book hadn't caught fire and burnt Smith's eyebrows off. So now it's Thursday and he's sitting at a table in the library while the frightful four reorganise Hogwarts's collection of Defence against the Dark Arts research texts. He's miserable, and they refuse to cooperate.

Lily's leaning against the wall, alphabetising a stack of texts beside her, and Ris and Bea are flipping through books. Nott has somehow managed to get his feet stuck between the tops of some books and the bottom of a shelf, and he's struggling to extricate himself. Teddy considers helping him, and then he decides that if Nott can't figure out how to escape from a bookshelf, then he probably deserves to lie there for at least a week.

"You know, Lil," Bea says, sticking her tongue between her lips while she reads, "your dad was quite attractive when he was younger."

"Fuck off," Lily says, kicking her friend's outstretched shin.

Ris leans over to glance at the book in Bea's hands—_A History of the Second Wizarding War_. "He was," she says. "But he's got nothing on the young Draco Malfoy."

"He's got nothing on the current Draco Malfoy," Nott says from the floor.

"Merlin, Nott, he's your uncle."

"Not by blood."

Teddy tries to focus on the essays he's meant to be grading. This is about as agonising as it is possible for life to be.

"Neither of them have anything on Scorpius, though." Bea sighs.

"Mmm, and Lil can tell us just how good he is in bed."

Never mind. _This_ is definitely the epitome of agony.

"He's with Rose," Lily points out. "Why don't you guys try sorting those books, instead of looking through them? We'll be here for all of Easter hols if you don't start soon?"

"He'd be with you if you hadn't ruined it," Nott says. Teddy wants to chuck something. What is _wrong_ with them? Did he talk about sex this much when he was at school? He can't have.

"He's happy with Rose." Lily looks up to Levitate her books to their shelves and notices Nott's current state. "Merlin, Nott, you're like a five year-old."

"Help?"

Teddy glances up to see Ris laughing silently while Lily leans over and tugs at the bottoms of Nott's trouser legs. That does nothing but ram the tops of his feet into the bottom of the shelf, and he swears at her.

Lily shrugs. "Sorry, best I could do."

"You're a bitch, Potter."

Teddy turns the page of Keenan O'Brien's paper and the four students glance over at him as if they'd forgotten he was there.

"Professor," Nott whines, "any chance you could help me?"

"Terribly sorry, Mister Nott, but I don't think I can."

Teddy hides his smirk behind a swallow from his coffee mug, but Lily's grin is wide enough for both of them. He wants to kiss her, which is a horrible and inappropriate reaction to having the four worst behaved students in Hogwarts history (give or take a few) in detention but there it is. His brain is clearly off-kilter.

"I'll set you free if you promise to help us from now on, instead of rolling on the floor like a house elf," Ris says, jabbing Nott's side with her wand.

"Hey," Lily cuts in. "What do house elves have to do with it?"

"It's just an expression," Bea defends.

"Okay, okay, I swear," Nott says. Ris casts a few quick charms that Teddy doesn't quite catch, and then Nott is sitting up, pulling books from the shelf he was previously stuck under. Bea's grin tells him the attachment was more magical than natural. They _would_ prank each other in fucking detention. He's not sure where these four came from, but he's fairly certain the world will soon explode with the force of them.

"So, back to our previous conversation," Bea begins.

"Would you rather sleep with Lily's father or my uncle?" Nott continues.

Lily makes a retching noise while Ris pretends to consider. Teddy can feel redness colouring his cheeks. His hair may already have turned an embarrassed amber shade. He's never been this uncomfortable in his life.

"Both," Ris says.

"_Merlin_," Lily chucks a book at her friend. It's a thick text, and if Nott hadn't waved his wand it might have broken Ris's nose. "You lot are horrible."

Teddy cannot take this anymore. "All right." He sets the stack of parchment on the table beside him and stands. "We'll call that finished. You can all go. But will you please stop terrorising your classmates? You've only got six more weeks here," he reminds them. "It might be time to grow up."

"Right. Thanks, sir!" Ris pushes herself to her feet and flees from the library, leaving a pile of books in the aisle. Bea follows a moment later. Nott hesitates and begins reshelving the texts he's just removed, while Lily picks up Ris's mess.

Teddy gathers his mug and papers, and when he turns he finds Nott and Lily watching him. Lily grins and Nott says, "Your face goes this funny shade of red when you're uncomfortable. It is quite precious. Sir."

Teddy's brain stops working. Lily grabs Nott's hand and pulls him, giggling, from the library. "Fuck it all," Teddy tells the air. Pranking _him_ during their detention. They are beyond insane.

He gathers his wits and returns to his office and its adjoining living quarters. He has fourth year Ravenclaws at eight, so he should probably go to sleep, but instead he sits up staring out the window over his small and mostly useless stove. He cannot wait until June, when the seventh years finish their exams and leave the castle. His colleagues are also looking forward to the last day of school, but they're thinking of the end of Bea and her henchmen's reign of terror. Teddy's just dreaming of a day when passing Lily in the hallway doesn't hit him like a stunning charm to the gut. It'll be easier when he's not faced with the string of freckles over her nose and her toffee apple hair every day.

But then he thinks of the lack of her. No Lily slouching in the back row of his classroom, no forever-long legs sticking from beneath a green and grey skirt, no red sunglasses blocking her eyes on Monday mornings, no freckled hand steady in the air, dripping chiming silver bangles as she asks a tangential question. And here he comes again, to the question that's been bothering him for two years, since she became herself: Will life without Lily be better than life with Lily?

Not, he considers as he runs water into his tea kettle, that what he has could really be considered "life with Lily." He spends his time begging her to behave, punishing her and her friends, being absolutely astonished by the quality of her work—she acts like she doesn't give a damn, and then pulls grades only beaten by Hugo and a few other Ravenclaws, and trying not to lust after her. All of these things, aside from the grading, are utterly ineffective. And distancing. Not exactly the ideal combination.

He spins the dial on his stove until gas sputters under the kettle and glances out the window again. The moon's full, and he's feeling restless. He hates full moons. "What you're lacking," he tells himself, willing the water to boil, "is something steady."

Teddy spent so much of his childhood vacillating between Gran's manor outside of London and the Potter's home in Cumbria that he honestly believes he spent more time spinning through chimneys than in either place. And then during his Hogwarts years he visited the Shell Cottage with Vic or Graham's home in Dublin and, well, he's never settled. Settling isn't in his nature—up until this teaching job, anything that felt steady eventually upended, with him bruised and on the outside.

And now here he is, employed in a career that might last his whole life. That seems settled. Of course, he's craving Lily, who sometimes seems like the most erratic person on the planet. He tries to imagine what Graham would say, if he could tell Graham without Graham telling Victoire. He'd shake his head, punch Teddy in the shoulder, mutter, "That's fucked up, man," and then drag Teddy out to a pub. Not exactly a proper or lasting solution.

The tea kettle whistles, but Teddy shoves it off the burner without pouring any water. He suddenly wants sleep and dreams. He flips off the stove and turns to his bedroom. The pillows muffle his sigh as he falls, still-clothed, to his bed. Sometimes he dreams of her, and sometimes there it's okay.

His classes crawl the next day, but he has neither his NEWT nor OWL levels on Fridays, which is lucky, because if he'd had his seventh years, there's a good chance he would have lost control and cursed them out. They're all a little mad, anyway, since it's the Friday before Easter hols and most students are heading home for the week.

Teddy's one of the few professors required to stay at Hogwarts during the holidays—something to do with seniority and short straws—but he doesn't really mind. It'll give him the opportunity to catch up on some grading and some sleep.

But Friday night he's still awake at one, thinking of her and not much else. The wind is blowing through the cracks in his windowpane and the moon is too bright. He gets up from his desk, where he's been unsuccessfully grading papers for the last three hours, and crosses to the door that leads to the corridor. A post-midnight walk in the nearly-empty castle sounds more appealing than bed or work, and so he wanders up the nearest set of stairs.

He's drawing near to North Tower when he first hears it. It sounds like music, and he stills for a moment before moving forward again.

The noise is louder as he reaches the winding staircase to North Tower, and he pauses when he reaches the top. Lily's sitting cross-legged in the centre of the circular tower, a wireless radio balanced on her knee, her hands spread like starfish on the pale stone floor behind her. Her hair is tangled down her back, her neck curved like a comma. The radio station is playing instrumental music, and she seems to be breathing in time to the beat. He can't tell if she's aware he's in the room with her. A part of him wants to stand and watch her. A more rational part wants to leave her alone uninterrupted. The active part makes him cough.

Lily jumps and the wireless clatters from her knee to the floor. She twists her head around and blinks, and then, recognising him, grabs the wireless and switches it off, standing and crossing her arms before slouching a little. Teddy's struck by the artifice of it all—such an artificial girl, this Lily Potter, like rhyming lines from a poorly written poem.

"Professor," she says, when the silence between them has stretched long and awkward enough to make even Lily uncomfortable.

"Miss Potter." Teddy glances around. "I didn't intend to interrupt you. Although technically you're not meant to be out of Slytherin right now."

"Yeah, I know. It's just." She shrugs. "Lonely down there. Everyone's gone. Let it go, this time?"

"I usually do," he points out, and she nods.

"You do. Thank you."

He waits a beat or two, and then says, "You can stay here. I'll see you next week."

Before he can make it to the third step she asks, her voice loud in the quiet of the night, "Do you really hate us?"

Teddy pivots on the shallow step and looks up at her. She's still standing in the tower, her arms protective over her stomach, her eyes darting towards his and away. "No, of course I don't. You and your friends can be bloody aggravating a lot of the time, but no, I could never hate any of you."

"Not even Nott?" she asks, an attempt at a smirk on the pale line of her lips.

"Hate is much too strong a word for what I think of Nott." Teddy tempers the words with a smile.

"Not even me?"

His heart catches on his ribs. "Never you." She's paler in the moonlight, looks almost like a ghost with flames for hair. Fire burns you, Teddy reminds himself. "Why would you think that?"

"I don't know." She turns and walks to the window. He comes back up the stairs, leans against the wall across the room from her, and waits. Lily continues, "When you started teaching here you must have been shocked to find me."

"Lil, I knew you'd be my student." He supposes he should probably tell her she's lovely, intelligent, she'll go far, and then he should run away, because this could turn from starry night to tempest in under a second.

She faces him, holds out her arms like _look_, and says in a sharp voice, "But didn't I surprise you? Shock you?" Her breath ricochets from her mouth: "Horrify you?"

"No one," Teddy's voice sounds like a growl, "_no_ _one_ could ever look at you and be horrified."

"Really?" What a bitter word.

"Honest. I wouldn't lie to you."

"How am I supposed to believe that?"

Teddy shrugged. "I guess I can't really prove it to you. But I am being honest when I say that I was surprised, the first time I saw you in the corridor here. Because you grew up, and I never really expected that. Because you changed—Merlin, how you changed—but for you change didn't seem to be a bad thing." Your student, he reminds himself. Your student.

Lily coughs. "Fuck, what bullshit, though. I hate how I've changed. Some days—many days—I am mortified to be seen with Ris and Bea and Conor. They're horrible, sometimes."

She bites her lip, then bursts, "And wow, that sounds selfish, you know? I hate my best friends; I honestly believe I'm too good for them? What kind of person does that make me?"

Teddy hesitates a moment. There's too much anger there, more than he'd have thought. "It just means that you are ready to move on and they are not, quite yet. They'll grow up soon, probably, and then you will all be on the same level, but if they don't—people grow apart, Lily. Not many actually stay friends forever."

"Well you're a bright fucking ray of sunshine," she says, but she's got a bit of a smile on her lips.

"It's my job," he says, and then she inhales sharply and he remembers, _your student_, and his limbs feel a little frozen.

"We're on break," he hurries. "Let's just say this whole conversation was well outside the realms of school. Forget it, etcetera."

She sighs, tangles her fingers in her hair. "If you weren't my teacher, what would you be doing right now?"

Say it, his brain screams, say _walking away_. Say, _I'd never have stayed._ Say, _anything_, anything but, "I'd really love to be holding you."

Lily doesn't move, but she asks, "Given that you're my teacher, is that completely impossible?" Teddy waits two heartbeats, "Because I'd really love to be held. By you."

Teddy has defeated rational thought. It takes him seven strides to get to Lily and when his hands press against her back she rests her cheek against the soft jumper over his collarbone and murmurs, "Forget it, etcetera."

But he'd really rather not.

They don't sleep together. Well, _literally_, they do. Figuratively, though, not at all. They barely even kiss—that's just hesitant brushes of lips-on-lips and lips-on-skin—and when he wakes up in the morning she's sitting on the windowsill in his bedroom, her legs swinging in their black leggings, her eyes locked on the woods.

Lily speaks before he can. "Forgotten?" she asks.

"Impossible," he responds.

She turns and stares at him. "You want to repeat it? Turn us into something?"

"I mean, obviously now it's very illegal. But in a couple of months it won't be, and if you're at all interested—"

Lily's on him, her lips pleading at his like heaven. Teddy thinks that, sure, fire can burn you, but more often it saves you.

**A/N:** I'm completely unsure about this one, but I hope you all like it okay!


	10. astoria and draco

**Disclaimer: **I do not own _Harry Potter_.

Pairing: Astoria Greengrass + Draco Malfoy  
><span>For<span>: Tat (Tat1312)  
><span>Prompt<span>: Thief

:::

Like an Empty Sky

Astoria feels the circle of silver against the skin beneath the elastic of her knickers and the loose brush of her grey dress robes. She's swaying among classmates and former-classmates and parents as the Malfoy's hired string quartet plays Christmas song after Christmas song and people fall against each other in awkward movements meant to look sexy.

Narcissa wants this Christmas, a year and a half after all the War, to represent a return to normalcy. Astoria believes she's insane—there was never any normal to return to—but when Astoria told her father she'd rather stay home, or better yet, at Hogwarts, he'd gripped her arm tightly and said, "You must help us stay strong." Personally Astoria thought this was just another example of her father being a pompous arse, but she knew better than to say as much.

So here she is, on the terrace at the recently renovated Malfoy Manor, dancing with Blaise Zabini, who's staring over her shoulder at Daphne, who's dancing with Theo, who's as consumed in Daph as she is in him. Really Zabini must admit he's lost her, but Astoria is glad he's distracted at the moment. Otherwise he might push forward and feel the hand mirror slipped beneath Astoria's clothes.

Just ten minutes ago the mirror had been sitting on Mrs. Malfoy's bedside table. Then Astoria had taken the two flights up, the three corridors down, cracked a simple locking charm, and stuck the serpent-engraved mirror beneath her robes—one of the easiest ones.

Astoria had been feeling confined in the Malfoy's home, but the cool metal against her skin helps her breathe. She's not afraid of being caught. She's more scared of the burn on her fingertips, of being simple.

Blaise lets go of her as the song fades and glances over at Daphne; her grip on Theo hasn't loosened at all. "Give up," Astoria advises. "They're practically engaged."

He straightens his shoulders and fixes cold brown eyes on hers. "Stop making assumptions, Greengrass."

"I'm not, Zabini." She turns, hesitates, and adds, "Happy Christmas," over her shoulder. He doesn't respond.

"Pissing off Blaise, Greengrass?" Charlotte takes her arm when she reaches the edge of the terrace. Astoria can feel the cold December air fighting against the heating charms the Malfoy's have layered over the outdoor space.

"Only a little bit. He needs to get his head out of his arse."

"Agreed. Still, maybe you should have let him dream about Daph through Christmas and disillusioned him on New Year's?"

Astoria presses her hand against her hip, her index and middle fingers lying against the fabric over the silver disc. "He needs to find someone else to snog on New Year's. I just thought I'd give him plenty of time."

Charlie sighs. "If only he'd look at me. I'd put up with all that pining over Daph to snog him."

"You're not the only one." Blaise has just returned to the floor with his hands on Sylvia Bulstrode's waist. It's a generally accepted fact that Sylvia's father is not Millicent's father, as the two sisters look about as alike as a lion and a snake. Their personalities, however, are identical.

"Shit," Charlie mutters. She tugs a hand through her tangle of dark curls and turns to face Astoria. "So what are you doing, now that Blaise has abandoned you?"

"Thought I might go find Draco. You haven't seen him around anywhere, have you?"

Charlie turns cold. "I don't know why you still speak to him."

"I told you, he's better now."

"Is he?" Charlie props her hands on her hips. "So you don't think he'd testify again?"

Astoria bites her lip. She always forgets that Charlie's favourite cousin had ended up in Azkaban because of Draco's testimony, although Charlie's biggest problem seems to be that Harry Potter had helped Draco escape the threat of imprisonment, so Draco's confessions did not appear to be self-serving. Astoria is a little more lenient. After all, the general public accepted Draco more now. Most of their group, of course, did not.

"Right. Well, I'm going to find him."

"He's probably skulking in a corner somewhere. He must know his mum's the only one who wants him here," Charlie calls after her.

And Narcissa is the only reason he's here, Astoria's certain. Draco has his own friends, flat, and career in London. He has no need of this old society of hypocrites.

She finds him in the living room, standing beside the low-burning fire and involved in a quiet conversation with a tall, thin, and greying Lucius Malfoy. Astoria had heard that Lucius had returned from his shortened stay in Azkaban, but no one had mentioned that the prison had managed what years of being Voldemort's wingman had not. Lucius looks broken.

Draco glances toward Astoria as she hesitates on the doorjamb and holds out his hand. She approaches the two men, and Draco says, "Father, you remember Astoria."

"Of course. Miss Greengrass." He extends his hand, and Astoria takes it. Even his handshake feels week.

"Mr. Malfoy, it's good to see you again."

He nods. "You as well. Well, Draco, I should join the party. Think on what I said."

Draco stays silent. As his father exits the room, he crosses to lean against the arm of the couch, stretching his long legs in front of him.

"What does he want you to think about?" Astoria asks after he's stared at her in silence for a few seconds.

Draco jerks his head toward the terrace. They can hear the noise of the party through the open door, and he speaks softly, "Making amends."

Astoria says, "Oh," not like she's judging, but Draco interprets it that way.

"He doesn't seem to understand that I don't _want_ to. If it weren't for Mother I wouldn't have even come tonight." He's got a petulant tone to his voice, and for a moment Astoria sees the boy she knew at school, and then he adds, "And you, of course," and he's this new man, this stupid one.

"Yeah, whatever." She can feel her pale cheeks turning scarlet. "You're being absurd again."

"Am I?" He steps away from the couch and is standing over her, his long fingers brushing cool against her red cheeks, his index finger stopping just at the corner of her mouth. "I don't think so."

She wants to say something, but if she opens her mouth there's a chance he'll run his finger along her lip and then she'll be gripping his wrist and Apparating him back to his flat but it's Christmas, and she can't just go there the way she has before. So she stands still and manages to keep her eyes on his and waits.

"You are far too pretty for the Manor, you know." He drops his finger from her lips to her neck, circling around her pulse point before dropping it to land on the dip in collarbone. "I hate having you here."

"Nice," she manages. She can't breathe. Merlin, his hands.

"I mean, you're better than this place." He looks like he could spit, aggressive and upset. "You make wherever you are happier, but it doesn't work as well here."

"Draco," Astoria sighs, "stop. We're not..."

"Not what?" He crowds closer, and she can feel the metal of his mother's mirror burning against her side. He understands brokenness, but he doesn't understand the way she's broken. He might not even think she is, but mirrors fall and bring bad luck and Astoria has a feeling that stealing from his mother might not be okay.

She's stolen from him, too, but button-down shirts and boxer shorts don't matter as much. "Not," she hesitates and takes a step away from him. His finger catches on the top of her dress robes, hooks around so his nail is against her skin. "I don't know. I really don't, Draco." She glances toward the open door. "Can we...just...can we do this later?"

He drops his hand, finally, and her heart rate stutters back to somewhere near normal. "What is it that we were doing, exactly?" His voice is level but his eyes are shards of glass.

"Talking about something other than how utterly ridiculous this party is." She tries to keep her tone light, accompanies it with a smile, but he's still looking at her like she's betrayed him.

"Speaking of, I should go make my mother happy." He starts toward the doorway, his long strides carrying him away from her too quickly, and then he turns at the doorway, "Coming?"

She shakes her head. "I'll be out in a moment."

Astoria spreads her hands over the fire, even though it's burnt so low she can barely feel the warmth. Draco makes her want to be crazy.

If she were, she would have kissed him there, when he told her she was better than here. She would have pressed him back onto his parents' couch and snogged him until someone interrupted them. She would have been braver. But if she had been crazy, she would never have come to Draco in the first place. After the trials he had seemed so solid, so weirdly balanced, despite his troubles with Voldemort and his father's imprisonment, and she had felt like a kite in a windstorm. Draco seemed good for her, so she met him for lunch and dinner; once they drank far too much wine and she met him in bed, and after that—well, sneaking out of Hogwarts was far easier than she'd always expected.

But she'd never thought it meant a thing to him. She was a little blonde diversion, a slip of memory from his old world, someone temporary. And then tonight, here he was, making her sound important and permanent. Or at least semi-permanent and Astoria stares at the low-burning fire and wonders whether she wants to be something steady in Draco's well-organized life.

She presses her hand against his mother's mirror. Astoria decides she's done her time. She squeezes her eyes shut and Disapparates.

She lands in her bedroom and slips her robes from her shoulders, slides the mirror from the elastic waistband and unlocks her trunk. She reaches beneath her school robes and ratty jumpers and places it at the bottom, alongside a cashmere scarf of her aunt's, a gold Gryffindor lion paperweight from McGonagall's desk, a pair of sunglasses from Theo's room, a watch from a Muggle shop, and several other things that found their way home secreted under layers and against her skin. She rummages through the rest of her trunk until she finds one of Draco's old shirts, which she tugs on before pulling her hair up into a ponytail and crossing to the window.

It's a new moon tonight and the world looks colder in all this darkness. Her conversation with Draco has left her feeling as if her skin doesn't fit quite right, and the sight of the silver hand-mirror at the bottom of her trunk has frightened her. For once, stealing feels wrong.

She hears voices downstairs—Daphne and Theo, back and looking for her or perhaps just to get some time alone—and she grabs her wand from the floor and shuts her eyes. She arrives at Draco's flat and the darkness is so complete that for a moment she feels as if she's been caught in a limbo. She casts a lumos charm quickly, and then flicks on the lamp over the sofa in the corner of Draco's library. She reaches for a copy of the Muggle book _Grimm's Fairytales_ that she left on his coffee table the last time she visited and curls up to wait for him.

He enters through his front door about an hour later, and she hears him mutter, "Shit," when he notices the light. And then he sees her and adds, "Astoria? I wondered where you got to. Is that my shirt?"

She glances down, shrugs, and nods. "I didn't want to be there anymore."

"Granted." He drops his coat on the chair and goes into the kitchen. He comes back with two bottles of Butterbeer, tossing one to her while he goes to lean against the wall by the window. He stares out at the night sky while she charms her bottle open, and then he asks, "But why'd you come here?"

"I went home first." But there was nothing there. "And then Daph and Theo came back."

"Ah," he says. He drinks from his Butterbeer as she swirls the foam in hers. "There's no moon tonight."

She nods. She stares at her bare feet and says, "I'm a thief."

He turns to look at her. "Did you steal the moon?"

"A mirror from your mum's room. And some other stuff, but not from you."

"A mirror?" he asks. "How'd you manage that?"

"I hid it under my robes." She can feel her cheeks burn again. Damn him.

"Well," he draws the word out like it's a joke, and then he starts laughing. "Merlin, if I'd known that I'd have stayed over tonight. I'd love to see the look on Mother's face." He bites back his laughter when he sees the expression on hers. "What's the matter?"

"It doesn't bother you?"

"Well, clearly it's wrong, but my mother could do with a bit of punishing." He glances back out the window, and then walks across the room again, sitting beside her on the couch and reaching to tug at her ponytail. "But did you do it to punish her?"

"Not really. I just like...stealing."

"Huh." He's tangled his fingers in her hair, and she thinks she'd like him to kiss her now. "Why?"

"I don't know. It feels dangerous, I guess."

"You know," he says, as his lips near hers and her skin boils from his breath, "there are other ways to tempt fate." And then he's finally kissing her and she doesn't really mind about the stealing anymore because this feels like she's standing on the edge of a cliff with her arms out like wings.

But then he pulls away from her and she feels safe again. "Can you keep touching me?" she asks.

He laughs, sending strands of her hair up into the air. "For how long?"

"You know," she stretches her legs out, swings to her feet, and grabs onto his hand, "I would really love if you never let me alone again."

"You sound crazy," he says, following her into his bedroom. "Never again—you'll be tired of me."

"Draco," she falls back against the pillows, "I don't dislike you."

"No?"

"In fact, I might actually like you." He's shrugging out of his shirt, but she just wants him there, nearer her.

"Might?"

"Will, if you'd just get _here_."

He laughs. "Merlin, here you're insatiable. Anywhere else—"

"That's not fair," she cuts in, pulling herself up so she's sitting against his headboard. She glares at him, standing shirtless at the foot of his bed, waiting for her to prove him wrong. "We've been out before. I just can't...in your house..."

"Around our families, you mean. Around all our classmates. You're ashamed—"

"Stop," she says. She slides from his bed and stands on tiptoe in front of him, pressing her hands against his face and forcing him to look at her eyes. "I am not ashamed of you. Of how they'll react, yes. But not of you. If you want to walk into next year's Christmas party holding hands, I'll do that. Let's hit them all in the face with this. Let's not sneak around." She wants to burrow inside those eyes, between those lips. "Can we just jump?"

His hands are hot on her hips and his lips, when they finally fall on hers, feel like a fever. She decides, as they tangle themselves backwards onto his bed, that they've already left the cliff. They're about to hit bottom, but she thinks the landing might be a bit like flying.

**A/N: **I hope this was all right! I appreciate reviews.


	11. roxanne

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Harry Potter_.

Character: Roxanne Weasley  
><span>For<span>: in sync

:::

under the moon

Roxanne hovered over the lake her last night at Hogwarts, her bare toes trailing lines through the dark water, and she tried very hard not to look at the lights of the castle behind her. She was trying to forget sadness, and tonight the reflection of Hogwarts on the lake—the way it had looked the first time she had seen it, seven years ago—made her sadder than nearly anything.

She tried to lose herself in the cold water on her feet and the warm, wet air around her, in the feeling of floating, but she couldn't forget the bright loom of the school. Her history sat there, her family's history. Her friends slept in rows in dormitories and her professors slept in their rooms and she sat with her back to all of it, wishing for the next day to be over, or for that night to last forever.

Roxanne urged her broomstick up, sending streams of water from her toes as she shot toward the moon. She circled in the air a few times, let off a burst of nerves in a scream, and sent herself gliding over the black space of the Forest. She hoped that whatever came next for her—whether it was a flat with her cousins or with Greg and his mates or back to her parents' home—that she did not lose her ability to fly. But really she was more concerned about losing her love of flying. She remembered asking her aunt Ginny how she had managed to give up flying, and could still see the way her aunt had smiled at her, sad, like Roxanne's question was naive.

She had said, "It wasn't all that hard, Roxie. By the time I left the Harpies I didn't really love it anymore."

Roxie had stared up at Ginny and pressed, "But how could you?"

Ginny had shrugged. "Time passes, feelings change. I hope it never happens to you, Rox," and then she'd ruffled Roxanne's hair and handed her the old Firebolt they'd been examining, and Roxie had forgotten about the conversation in the joy of flying such a beautiful old broom.

But the look on her aunt's face came back, and Roxie worried as she dropped down beneath the leafy branches of the Forest. She was seventeen and she still loved flying, but what if eighteen hit and taking off into the atmosphere didn't have the same appeal? What if she got her dream position with the Wimbourne Wasps, and all the pressure got to her, and she felt the draw of gravity in a way she never had before? Or if she didn't get it and flying started reminding her of failure?

These questions burned. Thoughts like these plagued Roxanne; she had felt this way after OWLs and career workshops and she dreaded the eventual answers almost as much as she did the way the questions themselves weighed on her mind. She wanted, so badly, to fly until the wind took her on—until she herself turned into the rush of summer storms. She stared up at the moon and swore at it, begged it to drag the tides up over the land, so Roxanne had to fly forever.

She was so involved in her thoughts that she didn't hear the sound of another person flying through the air towards her, until he hovered directly in front of her and said, "You're being hyperbolic again, aren't you."

"Merlin, Fred, don't _do _that."

"I've been coming towards you for the last minute. It's not my fault you were too deep in your head to notice."

She sighed as her younger brother drifted to sit beside her. He kicked his foot over to nudge hers and she kicked him back, an unexpected smile on her lips. "How'd you know I was out here?"

"Marianne came to find me. Said she noticed you weren't in bed and you hadn't mentioned going to see Greg, so she was worried about you. Said you had been acting weird lately, but especially today. And if you don't want to be found when you start going through crises, you should probably find a different place to freak out."

"I never mind being found," she said. Her nights always felt better when Fred joined her—not because she needed him to prove anything, but because it was nice being reminded how much he—and her friends—loved her.

"So what are you thinking about tonight?" Fred asked. "Leaving Hogwarts? Going out into the big bad world?" He sounded exasperated, which was strange. Usually Fred put up with her neuroses and she put up with his often off-colour jokes. She was mad, but she also had a good sense of humour. Fred was left with their father's easy-going nature—something he often lamented, but which Roxanne envied.

"Not really," she answered. Only sort of. Her questions were bigger. They spanned beyond the following morning and its train ride, beyond the next year.

"Well, what then?" Fred bit the words off, hard, like the crunch of boots in snow. Roxanne glanced at him, and he must have caught the direction of her look in the darkness, because he continued, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's just, I was asleep. And I would really like to get back to bed before it's time to leave."

"Sorry," Roxanne muttered, urging her broom forward a few feet, "you can go in, Fred. I don't need you."

"Lie," he said, following her. "You always need me. I'm your brother, and all that. So why don't you tell me what's bothering you, and then I can say the right thing, or something that's good enough, and we can both go back to bed and wake up tomorrow ready to take on another day."

"How do I know I'm going to be happy?" Roxanne asked. She knew the question sounded pathetic, sad, small in the largeness of the dark sky. Fred's snort was completely deserved. But she still wanted to know what he thought about it; why did they try so hard, when things ended?

"Merlin, Roxanne, you just jump straight into the fire, don't you?" Fred asked, after a moment. "You can't know that you'll be happy. It's impossible. But you can try damn hard to make yourself happy, and I think that if you do that there's a good chance your life won't be the shit-show you're apparently expecting." He sighed.

"You're fifteen, Fred. What do you know about the future?"

"I know you're wasting a lot of the present worrying about it."

She dug her nails into the wood of her broomstick handle. "What if everything I do is—?"

"Stop." He reached out and fastened his hand around her wrist. "This is stupid. You will be fine, I promise. You just need to let yourself believe it. You keep putting up walls made of questions, Roxie, and I think they're starting to ruin things."

"So what do you suggest?" There was more venom in her tone than she intended, but Fred didn't let go of her.

"Just breathe, you know? Just live. Like this." And he let go of her, took off toward the Quidditch pitch, a long cry of release following in the air behind him. She stared as the dark shape moved away from the Forest, and then she leaned forward and shot after him.

He was circling the hoops at one end when Roxanne reached the pitch. "You're an arse," she called, but he just laughed and shot toward her.

"What you need is a good shaking. Since I can't give you that, what say we race back to the castle?"

"You're on."

He took off and she followed, and her questions burrowed deep inside her bones, and she knew they'd rise again and again but Fred was there and at that moment he was beating her. She leaned close to the broom handle and forgot about worrying for a little while.

There'd be enough time for the future the next day, and for days after it.

**A/N:** This is so short. I desperately hope it's still an okay look at Roxanne's character (albeit a very limited one).


	12. lily and james

**Disclaimer**: I don't own _Harry Potter_.  
><strong>AN:** It's been ages, and I'm sorry. Also this is a disaster. I'm a bit out of practice.

Pairing: James Potter/Lily Evans  
><span>Prompt<span>: orange flower, mudblood, & France [preferably no severus]  
><span>For<span>: FlubberyFlobberworms

:::

Groundlessness

Lily had a plan. It was a rather inglorious one, but it was a plan, and she had gone so long following other people's ideas that having one of her own felt nice. A bit like having solid ground under her again.

It involved a grotesque orange flower and some French croissants. Well, what would have been French croissants if any of the Hogwarts house elves had come from France. Most of them were from northern England or southern Scotland, and so their knowledge of croissants was a bit limited. Lily only knew this because Alice had spent last summer in Paris and came back complaining about the faux-French croissants that frequently appeared on the breakfast table.

So she got the croissants (their French nature being questionable) from the house elves. The flower was a bit more difficult to come by. Lily could have just plucked a foxglove from one of the plants blooming down by the herbology greenhouses, but she had heard that foxglove might possibly be poisonous, and besides, the purple blossoms were nowhere near embarrassing enough.

An orange flower with a thousand fluffy petals and a thick stem, that was the sort of flower Lily needed for her prank. Unfortunately, those flowers didn't seem to exist. Or, if they did, they were certainly not to be found in the Scottish highlands. So Lily had to improvise.

Alice found her sitting cross-legged on her bed, staring at several damp leaves piled on the maroon duvet.

"First step to setting leaves on fire is do it outside. Second involves using your wand," Alice informed her, dropping her bag of books on her own bed and flopping back to watch her best friend continue her staring contest with the foliage.

"I'm not trying to set them on fire," Lily replied. "Obviously."

"Oh, well, pardon me. What are you doing?"

"Trying to figure out a way to Transfigure them."

"Into?"

Lily glanced over at her, green eyes hard. "It's a secret."

Alice sighed. "Sometimes, you are almost as difficult a friend as Remus. Today you may even be approaching Potter's level."

"Oh, piss off." Lily tempered her harsh words with a brief smile at her friend, but Alice swung her feet to the floor and stood.

"Fine, I will." She paused in the doorway. "Lily, you also need your wand for Transfiguration."

Lily flicked her off. Alice laughed, leaving the dormitory for the common room and whatever absurdities the other seventh years were undoubtedly getting up to — they had been increasingly mad over the past several weeks, and earlier Lily had seen Peter running through the corridors with an aquarium full of frog spawn clutched in his arms.

She had more important things to worry about. Namely, how to turn a pile of decaying leaves into an ugly flower.

Lily sighed and pulled her wand from beneath her thigh, where it had rolled when James came in briefly to steal some chocolate for Remus and ended up wrestling her to the bed in order to get to the stash beneath her pillow. He hadn't commented on the leaves, probably thought she just liked them. She might come down to breakfast on Saturday and find the Gryffindor table decorated with autumn leaves, because that was the sort of thing James did. The sort of thing that should have been creepy but wasn't and was nice and was certainly too much.

She directed her wand at the leaves and concentrated on the way she imagined the flower looking. The leaves moved together and then gave up in a huff of air, settling back on her duvet about five centimetres from where they had been originally. Lily scowled at them.

She tried again. This time two of the leaves grew petals. They looked downright monstrous.

"Fuck."

Lily undid that spell and shut her eyes, visualising the transformation she hoped would take place, and then cast the spell. She kept her eyes closed for a long time, much longer than it would take for a bunch of leaves to coalesce into a hideous flower.

She opened them and grinned. Sitting there on her duvet was a disgusting orange flower, more closely resembling a fuzzy cotton ball than anything plant-like. "Perfect." It was a bit crinkly for a flower, but it would do.

The croissant bit would have to wait for morning, so Lily set a permanence charm on the flower and hid it in her trunk before hurrying down the stairs to the common room, where Alice sat playing Exploding Snap with James and Remus.

"Where's Black?"

"No idea," James replied. "He was bored by the lack of explosions that have occurred thus far in this game."

Lily smiled and sat beside Alice, tucking her knees beneath her chin and watching as Remus bit his lip, fingers careful on the backs of his cards.

"Remus scared him off, you mean?"

Remus spared a moment to glare over at Lily, and Alice grinned. "Did you figure out that Transfiguration you were working on, Lil? Maybe James would like to help you."

James nodded. "I certainly could, Lily, doll. What do you need? Turning a spot into a beauty mark? A hairy leg into a smooth one? A — " He cut off involuntarily. Lily had hit him with a silencing charm.

"Not nice, James." Remus set his cards face-down on the floor and fished his wand from the pocket of his robes. "Are you going to help him out?" he asked Lily.

Lily grinned and James clasped his hands in front of his chest, looking from Lily to Remus while Alice leaned back on her hands and laughed. "Maybe," Lily said. "I don't know. Do you think he'll be less rude when I let him talk again?"

"There's always hope," Remus replied, his lips quirking. "Maybe the millionth time will work."

Lily raised her wand and released the charm. James rolled his lips between his teeth, cocked his head so some dark hair fell across his forehead, and then said, "Maybe you would like to transfigure your nose? Make it a little straighter?"

Remus didn't release the silencing charm that time. Even he seemed to think James had deserved it.

James was talking again by breakfast the next morning. Lily thought it was probably to do with Black, but she didn't mind, because sitting on the gold plate in front of James was the perfectly curved fluffy crescent of a French (?) croissant.

Lily had gotten up early to ensure that James received this particular breakfast, and he grinned at her as he sat down. "Special breakfast to make up for the silencing yesterday? It's all right, you're forgiven."

He lifted the croissant to his mouth, pressed it against his lips, and bit down.

The pastry exploded into a crinkly, many-petaled, violently orange flower. James spat out the mouthful he'd managed and swore, "Fucking Merlin, Lily, that tastes foul."

She grinned and stood to laughter from the table around her. "Thought it would."

All in all, she decided, as she left the Great Hall, the joke had been lacking something. Not James's reaction — that was fine. Not the reaction of the rest of the school, or all those at breakfast. They had laughed, that's what she had wanted. But it seemed a little tired, the whole pranking thing. She had thought that she was feeling like she didn't have ground beneath her because she hadn't done anything in so long, but here she was, just having done something, and floating up towards the ceiling.

Not literally, of course. That could have happened, if one of the boys had followed her from the Hall and set a levitation charm of some sort on her. But she was alone on the main staircase, alone and feeling increasingly unhappy, despite the success of that stupid prank. Maybe, she thought, maybe she had gone about the prank the wrong way. Maybe if she had cursed the croissant so that James bit into it and then he turned into an orange flower...or what if there was a flower and he smelled it and turned into a croissant?

Both of those ideas were impossible, in addition to being absurd, and Lily sat down on the top step on the second staircase and rested her chin in her hands. She hated this feeling of groundlessness — anchorlessness — just generally listless, really. She had tried everything: pranks and parties and Firewhisky and classwork and staying up all night and sleeping a solid ten hours and Hogsmeade visits and exercise, but nothing had worked.

Sadness had a way of digging its claws in, Lily thought, and it seemed to have gotten pretty deep into her veins. She moved to the side of the stone steps as a group of Slytherins hurried up past her, and she leaned her head against the banister when one of them stopped. "What're you doing, mudblood? Where're all your little friends?"

Lily didn't need to look up to know that the acidic voice belonged to Bellatrix Black. She also didn't need to open her eyes to know that the other girl's wand was hanging loose in her right hand. She sighed. "Where do you think my friends are, pureblood?"

"Yes, I am, thank you." Bellatrix's voice jumped between vitriol and something like a coo faster than that of anyone Lily had ever met. The other Slytherins let off puffs of laughter — they never truly laughed outright, at least not in Lily's hearing — as Lily looked up at them.

"What do you want, Bellatrix?" Lily asked, pushing herself to her feet and letting her hand fall to the pocket of her robes. She felt her wand there, but she didn't grasp it. Not yet. Fighting might cure her of her listless feelings momentarily, but chances were it would end terribly, with her sad and injured.

"I was just wondering where your friends were. Potter and I have something we need to discuss." Bellatrix kept her eyes on Lily's hand, and the other Slytherins — a group of fifth years whom Lily knew only by sight — moved to form a half-circle around her, some further down on the steps, others on the landing above the two girls.

"Do you?" Lily raised her eyebrows. "Well, James is back in the Great Hall. You want to talk to him, you'll find him there."

"Have you and Potter shagged yet?" one of the fifth years asked. Lily's hand went to her wand, an instant reaction she regretted as soon as she felt the wood beneath her fingers.

"Oh, that's got you all upset." Bellatrix had her wand centered on Lily's chest. "What's the matter? Does James actually have standards? Won't defile himself by sleeping with a mudblood like you?"

Lily kept her wand loose at her side. "More like I won't defile myself by sleeping with a pureblood like him. Got to keep all the scum together if we want to take over, don't we? Let all of you die out."

One of the others actually snarled. Lily sent up a Shield Charm before his curse could hit her, and she was surprised to see a smirk on Bellatrix's lips.

"You think you're clever, don't you." The other girl glanced around at her hangers-on, shrugged, and slid her wand back into her pocket. "I'll see you around, Evans." She turned back down the stairs, and the others grouped around her, taking up the entire staircase as they descended.

Lily bent her head so her hair fell over her face and she knew that thinking of prejudice was terribly dumb. Terribly. But her head kept turning over everything it meant — everything Bellatrix and the rest meant when they said shit like that — and Lily could neither move nor stop herself from thinking.

So she was still there when James and Sirius came up the stairs, James with the terrible orange flower pinned to the left of his robes, still missing a bite-shaped section of petals at the top.

"Really, Lil, that was quite a juvenile prank." Sirius stood on the step below her, one of his shoes kicking against her feet to get her attention. "We could have come up with that second year."

"But we didn't," James pointed out. "And everyone laughed. Although I hope that flower wasn't poisonous, because if it was I should probably get to the hospital wing."

"It wasn't." Lily shifted. "Did Bellatrix find you?" She looked at James.

He shrugged. "I passed her on the way out the hall, but she didn't say anything." He glanced at Sirius, who was staring over Lily's head, his face closed off. "Maybe because of Sirius, though. Why, did she bother you?"  
>"I'm going to — I'm going. I'll see you lot in the common room." Sirius ruffled Lily's hair as he stepped past her, and James sat on the step beneath her, so he had to turn his head to look at her. The toes of Lily's shoes were pressing into his back, but he didn't seem to mind, so she kept them there.<p>

"Lily? Was Bellatrix bothering you?" James repeated, his hand drifting up unconsciously to play with the flower on his robes. Lily felt something like warmth hitting her in the heart.

"It doesn't really matter if she was," Lily said. "I mean, I handled it fine. It is what it is, right?"

"That's such a stupid saying." James sounded so defeated that Lily didn't bother getting offended.

She stayed silent until he elaborated. "I mean, it is what it is until you do something to change it. Saying that just means that you're not willing to make any changes."

"What should I do to change what Bellatrix believes?"

James shrugged. She watched the way his hair feathered against the collar of his robes as it rose with his shoulders. "Nothing, I guess. I like you with all your limbs attached. I just meant, in general, that statement is an excuse."

"Thanks for the lesson, Potter." Lily pushed her feet forward so James had to shift a little. He kept his neck twisted, though, looking at her over his shoulder.

"What's got you all upset? It's more than Bellatrix and her crazies. That prank was funny, Lil. Sorry I didn't turn orange, or something, if that was supposed to happen."

Lily smiled. "That would have been a good idea, honestly, but no, the prank was fine. I'm glad you kept the flower. If it turns into leaves, or something, though, it's fine to toss them out." He grinned at her, but didn't say anything else. "I just — what're we doing, James?"

"Well, you're apparently Transfiguring leaves and croissants and I'm just trying to keep you from leaving me behind, really."

"How would I leave you behind?"

"I don't know, Lily." He turned around so he wasn't looking at her anymore and mumbled, "It's just, you are so important, and everyone knows it. Just by looking at you, they know it. How...how kind and smart and good, I mean really good, you are. And then there's me, and Sirius, and Peter, and Remus, sometimes, too — all of us, we're just stumbling. We make people laugh, we try not to take things seriously, and so we fuck up a lot."

"That's the least accurate description of anyone I've ever heard, and you hit all five of us with it," Lily moved over and slid to share James's step. He glanced over at her, and then returned to contemplating the way his robes folded over his knees.

"You think we're headed somewhere?"

Lily shook her head. "Honestly? I think we're headed nowhere, but it's all of us, James. Every single person. Lately I've just been...unable to figure out what I'm doing, and really, I think that's everyone. That's the good part — we're all stuck going towards nowhere together."

"You, me, and Bellatrix? I don't think I'll like nowhere, honestly."

Lily tilted her head to consider him, and then leaned her head against his shoulder. He took her hand in one of his, and she squeezed lightly. "It's not really the place, or idea, or whatever, that matters though, is it? I mean, we can be floating in nothing, but at least we'll still be us, you and me."

"Your prank was all right, Lil."

"Yours are sometimes okay, too."

James smiled and pressed a light kiss against her hair. She still didn't have ground beneath her, but at least she had James beside her. That was better, really.  
><strong><br>**


	13. lily luna and scorpius

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Harry Potter.

Pairing: Scorpius Malfoy + Lily Luna Potter  
><span>For<span>: opaque-girl

:::

absence

Scorpius Malfoy slept in Lily Potter's bed every night for nearly three months when he was fourteen, and then again when he was fifteen, and again, again, again, until he and Albus left Hogwarts and got their own place. Lily Potter stopped spending summers in her own bed — and most of her winters, autumns, and springs, for that matter — when she was eleven, but Scorpius still sometimes found it strange that he spent nights sweating between the sheets belonging to a girl he'd only ever met once, and then only a passing wave on Platform 9 ¾ before his and Albus's second year.

Lily Potter had shunned Hogwarts. That's what people said, when neither Lily's brothers nor her cousins were around (a rare occurrence, but it still happened occasionally). She had fled to some school in the United States because she was "too good" for the history-steeped castle that the rest of her family had embraced.

Although Scorpius was fairly certain that such pretentiousness was not the reason for Lily's apparent abandonment of the United Kingdom — the Potters didn't tend to breed pretentiousness — he wasn't sure of the real reason that she attended the Salem Witches' Institute, on the east coast, or why she spent her summers there, too, studying, according to Albus, under one of the foremost professors in astronomy there was (which reeked a little of pretentiousness, actually, but it was Albus, and not Lily, who said it). All Scorpius knew about Lily was that before she left home she really liked the color green and stepping into her room was a bit like getting lost in the middle of the Dark Forest, only warmer, and that whenever she visited home — usually twice a year, in November and April — she left something behind, making her room a little more interesting each year.

Or, interesting for Scorpius, probably unnoticeable for the rest of the people who passed through the youngest Potter's bedroom. He lay awake some nights, thinking of his parents and wondering which country they were working from and whether they were still planning on trying for another child, an attempt which Scorpius, even at thirteen, could tell was doomed to failure (his own birth had been helped along quite a bit by magic) and whether he ought to be nervous about starting up his fourth year at the end of August. His first summer, these thoughts kept him twisting in an ocean of anxiety late at night, and Albus would come bounding into Lily's bedroom every morning to find that Scorpius had somehow ended up with his head at the foot of the bed, even though he'd gone to sleep with his white hair against the oak headboard.

But the second summer Scorpius spent in Lily's bedroom, he lay awake the first night and stared at the door and then at the window and then at the bookshelf, and then he blinked because the pattern of shadows from the things on the bookshelf had changed in the last year. He got out of bed and crossed to find that Lily (he assumed) had deposited a glass snow globe beside the small plastic frog that Scorpius had taken to talking to very late at night the summer before. Scorpius flicked on the light and held the ceramic base of the snow globe in his hand. Inside the globe was a green figure he was very familiar with: the Statue of Liberty, that symbol of the United States, given to the Americans by the French after the Americans successfully tossed off the yoke of their British ancestors/colonizers, depending on the side you took. It seemed an unusual thing to find in the bedroom of a twelve year old British witch, even if she did study in the States.

Scorpius turned it over in his hands, so the snow fell up around the seven points jutting from the statue's head. There was a button on the bottom, labeled "on/off," and a little box for batteries — he pressed the switch, but no music started playing. Of course it didn't, because while this was clearly a cheap Muggle souvenir, Lily Potter was a witch, and Scorpius was in a wizard's house. He levered the cover off the battery box anyway, and found a piece of parchment folded in to fill the space.

Scorpius considered leaving it undisturbed for only a second, and then used his fingertip to ease it out of the battery compartment, smoothing it out on the top of Lily's bookshelf and squinting to read the light handwriting.

_Scorpius Malfoy, you utter sneak._

He blinked, reread the line, kept reading.

_Scorpius Malfoy, you utter sneak. I cannot believe you would search through my bedroom. If my parents only knew! They would give you a very stern talking to about privacy._

_As it is, I don't really mind. Obviously I intended for you to find this. Honestly I'd have been a bit disappointed if you hadn't (imagine how stupid I'll feel if I come home in November and this is still sitting in the bottom of that stupid snow globe and you haven't found it — although if that happens, then Albus really needs to pick better friends. Who wouldn't be curious about such an ugly addition to my bedroom? (It was a gift from a friend's parents. They thought it amusing.)). _

_I just wanted to say hi, I guess, since you spend more time in my bedroom than I do these days and I think it's a little weird that I don't know the guy sleeping in my bed at all. So, hello! I'm Lily Potter and you're in my room. I hope you don't hate green as much as I'm beginning to. I know you're a Gryffindor, but you've got Slytherin blood (obviously, sneak) so hopefully green is in your blood. _

_Ta!_  
><em>Lily Luna Potter<em>

Scorpius grinned a little, his lips curving as he scanned the note again. It was weird and incongruent with what he knew about Lily — which, admittedly, wasn't much — but it was also oddly charming. He folded the note up, slid it back into its place, and went to bed.

That summer, when he had difficulty sleeping, he began drafting his reply to Lily. It was a much more peaceful pastime for his brain than worrying about everything, and by the end of the summer he had a good enough response planned to write it out for her.

_Dear Lily Luna Potter:_

_I am terribly sorry that I invaded your privacy. I realize that it was not a very good thing to do, especially considering that you're being so kind as to allow me to use your room in your absence, but I was curious about the — as you say — not particularly appealing Statue of Liberty snow globe. I am glad I opened your note, although I know that it was not the polite thing to do, as it has provided me with a bit of insight into who it was that decorated this room in such atrocious shades of green. (I do like green, I am just not very fond of the color of moss.)_

_Do you have houses at the Salem Witches' Institute? If you do, what are you? The Slytherin equivalent? (I bet. From what Albus says about you, you sound like one.) (Don't take that as an insult. I like Slytherins.) (Unsurprisingly.) _

_I hope that November is treating you well, as I assume that is when you will find this. See you next summer._

_Sincerely yours,  
>Scorpius Malfoy<em>

He slid it in underneath her letter, so she'd have to pull the first out to receive its partner, and went to bed for the last time as a fifteen year old in Lily Potter's bed.

:::

Sixteen hit Scorpius in his shoulders, and he came back to the Potters' home a bit more sure of himself and quite a bit more experienced; he barely thought about Lily as he and Albus hurried from the Potters' car to the front porch of their house, where they dumped their trunks before skirting the house to get to the back garden with their broomsticks and cigarettes (the latter for later, after Harry and Ginny had fallen exhausted into bed). By the time he finally made it up to Lily's bedroom, Albus's little sister was the furthest person from his mind.

That changed when he stepped inside, and saw that the room was no longer green. The walls were white, the curtains grey, the duvet black, the floor a pale wood that looked somehow off-putting with the other colors in the room.

Albus appeared behind Scorpius and clapped his friend on the shoulder. "Apparently Lily came home in November and demanded that Mum and Dad let her redo her room. Arguing that she spent barely any time in it didn't really work out — she was all, 'But I don't want to spend the time I am in it wanting to vomit,' or something. Hope it doesn't bother you, mate. I know the green made you feel at home."

Scorpius elbowed Albus in the side and said, "I like it," although he didn't, really, but it was better than the forest.

When Albus left, Scorpius shoved his trunk against the side of Lily's bed and crossed to the bookshelf, lifted the snow globe, and opened the battery case, to find it empty. But of course, putting this year's note in the same place last year's had been would have been too simple. Lily seemed to like complicated.

Scorpius examined the items collecting dust on top of her bookshelf; aside from his old friend the frog and the snow globe, there were also small unicorn figurines, a coiled ceramic snake, a dragon that flapped its wings tiredly as Scorpius's hands passed over him, and a stack of textbooks that leaned precariously at the edge of the shelf.

Nothing new, though. So Scorpius knelt and skimmed the spines of the books on the shelves, but he'd never have been able to tell if Lily had added a new one, so he gave up on that and stood to scowl at the frog.

It croaked at him.

Scorpius had carried on many conversations with this frog in years past, but they had all been one-sided. Now, the frog's mouth hung open, and a slip of parchment jutted from between plastic lips. He pulled it from the gullet of the figure and the mouth sealed shut again.

He sat down on Lily's bed and unfolded the paper.

_Dearest Score,_  
><em>I do hope you like the changes made to our bedroom. My parents are none too fond of them, but personally I think that makes them all the better. If you don't agree, keep your opinions to yourself, thank you.<em>

_Do you know you're about to be a sixth year? That's old. I hope OWLs went all right — I know Albus was mad panicked about them. I bet being his friend these past months took some doing, so good on you. You deserve a good friendship award. I'll leave one for next summer. (Aren't we terribly slow? This is worse than the time James's owl got stuck in a tropical storm in October and didn't make it to me until halfway into spring term.)_

_Salem Witches' Institute doesn't have houses, no. If there were houses, I suppose I'd probably be the Slytherin equivalent though. It's fine, I wasn't offended. I always thought that'd be a bit of an upset, the youngest Weasley-Potter in Slytherin — I was quite thrilled with the prospect when I was younger, actually. But then I went to America, and, alas, lost my chance to shake up society. What a shame._

_We do have societies, sort of, but you'd probably call my society — Astrology Club, we call it — a bunch of hufflepuffs, so I don't know that that means anything. Nothing like the sorting hat. I told some of my friends here about that, they called it segregation, got all indignant. Apparently they think it's old fashioned. If you ever run into any Americans, don't mention the way you're sorted._

_Anyway, Mum's calling for me to start packing, and I've still got to Charm Waverly Westing III (the frog) so I'd best wrap this up. Tell me, Scorpius, what is it like being an almost-sixth year at Hogwarts?_  
><em>Love from,<em>  
><em>Lily<em>

Scorpius fell asleep easily that night.

He responded to Lily at the end of the summer, and because he could not get Waverly Westing III's mouth to open again, slid the papers back beneath the snow globe. He didn't say much, just told her:

_Lil —_  
><em>Being an almost-sixth year at Hogwarts is a bit of a drag, honestly. Haven't you ever thought it'd be good for life to start, and then things like exams and professors start getting in your way, and you don't know how to avoid them? Or that's how I feel, most of the time. It's rubbish.<em>

_Thanks for the accolades on remaining Albus's friend through all the OWLs (which weren't that bad, aside from the whole year leading up to them and your brother). An award would be much appreciated._

_If you wanted to shake up society, why'd you run away to America? Slytherin would've been lucky to have you, I think. Also, why are you into astrology? Isn't it all a bunch of shit? _

_Have a good year, etc. etc. _  
><em>Scorpius<em>

:::

The next year the letter was slipped inside a book of poems — by an American Muggle poet, whose name rang no bells for Scorpius, a Frank O'Hara — that she had stuffed beneath the mattress, which Scorpius discovered to his displeasure after lying down on the first night of his last summer.

_Dear Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy:_

_A. What you're doing in school right now (or not right now, as it's summer, I assume, but what you were doing in school last week, or the week before, or five years ago) is life. It's the stupidest thing, to look at the life you're living as something you need to get over, or around, or through, in order to get to "real" life. Because, damn, if what you're doing now isn't real, then what's the point of it, really? If you're not living, why do we include all these years spent learning (magic or fucking or drinking or Quidditch — all those are things you've learned/are learning) in the average life expectancy? Your life started, you are living, and these seem like obvious statements because they are. You've just got to realize it. _

_B. Your award is attached at the end of the note. It's a chocolate frog. It might be a bit squished. If the card is of my father feel free to burn it._

_C. I "ran away" to America because I am not brave and I am afraid of the past. History both fascinates and repels me, and I thought that by coming here I could get away from it — be safe from what it means, but still able to analyze it. I mean my dad, of course, and mum, and everyone. My family is too much. Obviously that didn't really work out — apparently the name Potter carries import even here — but it's been better than I think it would have been at Hogwarts. At least my family isn't here._

_D. Astrology is sometimes a lot of shit. But sometimes it means something, and I adore when it means something. Things that seem so completely unplanned, for them to signify (to either affect or be affected by) the goings on here — what we do — that is amazing. And the future is full of possibilities. I like those._

_And there you are, Scorpius. Those are my philosophies. I hope they didn't bore you, but you did ask._  
><em>— Lil<em>

Scorpius read the note three times in the light from his wand. And then he folded it back up, found a piece of parchment at the top of his school trunk, and wrote out a response immediately, before he could think better of it.

_Lily — _  
><em>You think your history scares you? Why would you want to run away from such a — damn, it's charmed, you know? Your life? Here, it would've been. I admit, I don't know what you're doing in America, but running away from your past — that seems idiotic. Really dumb. I know you know my past. <em>

_If I could have run, I would have. No one would have blamed me. (Well, they would have, but that's because of my family's past.) But you. You. Haven't you talked to your brothers, your cousins? Hogwarts is your domain, really. Your words, stories about you — Lily, you could have taken the castle by storm. Why would you want to run away from that?_

_I'm sorry, I just don't get it._  
><em>— Score.<em>

And then he fastened the letter to his owl's leg, and sent it off toward America.

Lily's response came three weeks later. Albus saw the bird alight at his window while they sat out in the garden with Rose.

"Who're you getting letters from?"

"Parents," Scorpius mumbled. "Probably. Yvette went out mousing weeks ago and didn't come back. I was starting to get worried."

Rose glanced at him, eyes narrowed. She'd always had an uncanny sense of when someone was lying. She didn't push it, though, just sighed and stretched and said, "I should get going. I've got work early tomorrow. I'll see you two lazy arses sometime in the afternoon, I expect?"

"Obviously, Rosie," Albus responded, digging the heel of his sneaker into his cigarette. "You heading to bed, too?" he asked Scorpius, who had stood with Rose.

"Yeah, want to check that letter."

Albus nodded, and the two returned to the house.

Lily had written:

_Score — _  
><em>I understand where you're coming from, so I'll try to be patient. Your life is obviously much more difficult than mine, when it comes to outliving your past. (Not yours. Your family's. It's doubly removed but still so difficult to shake. The world is messed up. We never achieve eternity, but our actions might.) But that was a digression. What I meant to say is: You are brave. Your life has asked that you be brave, and you have been. Everyone was against you, you proved them wrong.<em>

_I have already told you I am not brave. I would have needed a different sort of bravery than you, it's true. But still, I am not brave. I would have had to live up to expectations, whereas you needed to live them down. Your task was more difficult. Mine, to me, at age eleven, seemed impossible. _  
><em>I said I wanted to shake up society. And I did, I did. But I also was terrified of shaking things up, of disrupting what — at age eleven — I believed my father had put in place. At age eleven, my father was everything, and what he and Aunt Hermione and Uncle Ron and everyone — including your father, a little, did you know? — had done, in defeating Voldemort, in restoring peace — that was where the world I knew began.<em>

_Do you see? In my mind, my family started everything. Look at the feet of anything, and I thought I'd see my parents there, at the foundations. I didn't want to see them wherever I looked, but I, most especially, didn't want others to see them, either. I didn't want to live up to them, because I didn't think I could. I wanted to be different, but i thought that would destroy what they'd started._

_You said I could've taken Hogwarts by storm. I've never wanted to wreck things, and storms do. I've just wanted to be. And I've been able to, mostly, here. It's better, if cowardly._

_Do you see?_

_— Lil_

_P.S. Your owl is a darling. Sorry I kept her so long, I was just a little unsure of how to respond._

Do you see? she'd asked him, like she expected him to try, to want to. To understand her. He read her note a few more times. Her words seemed transparent, like she felt she had nothing to hide from him. He wondered at that.

Albus talked about Lily a little, especially since Scorpius had begun asking questions about her, whenever she was brought up, pushing Albus to share a little more of his family with him. Albus told him Lily was loud but thoughtful, didn't tell them much of consequence. He said she was smart, and that in their childhood she'd been as much of a spitfire as James, if a bit less obnoxious about it.

But this felt open, like she'd given him her thoughts. It felt private. It felt like he didn't deserve to have it, not really, and still he was glad to have it. Glad that someone who didn't know him at all — evidenced by the repetition of his bravery — could trust him like that. He folded the note over and over and slid it in the pocket of his trousers, then pulled out a new sheet and wrote:

_I'm not brave._

He couldn't think of anything else to add, but he still sent it to her, after a week or so of wondering whether she'd think him strange for continuing this.

She didn't seem to. Her next letter came back faster than her first had, and she began it with, Let's agree to disagree and then rambled on about something she was working on in astrology. Scorpius wrote back, and somehow he and Lily became pen-pals, writing letters and using the school owls to give their own birds the chance to rest from transatlantic journeys.

Albus asked him once, "So, what, you have a pen-pal now? Aren't you a little old for that?"

Scorpius shrugged, said, "I'm bored, she's interesting," and that shut Albus up for a while, just because he was trying to sort out who the "she" in question was. Rose told him to leave off, when he started bothering Scorpius again, and eventually he did, or he seemed to. Maybe he kept wondering about it, but by Christmas both Lily and Scorpius had gotten too busy to send more than a quick note every few weeks, and by the time Scorpius finished school in June, he hadn't heard from Lily in three months.

Their last few exchanges, or the last ones he remembered come June, had been a little odd for them.

_Lily_, Scorpius had written, on a terribly lonely night while he was supposed to be working on a Potions essay, and the common room was empty and he had not had a date in five and a half months (not that he was counting), _Lily_, he wrote.

_Have you ever been in love? It's a weird thing, isn't it, something we all strive for but can't really define and seem to hate almost as much as we like it. The emotion I mean, not the person who we love._

_Sorry I don't think I'm making sense._

_But have you?_

He hadn't bothered signing it, he hadn't even planned on sending it, but later that night he needed a walk, so he snuck to the owlery and sent it off, even though he knew it sounded too personal, even for them.

She responded days later, though, and didn't reproach him for crossing lines.

_Scorpius — _  
><em>Are you psychic? I was just thinking about this. What love is, I mean.<em>

_I have been in love. In some ways, I think I still am. It's hard, you know? To open up like that, to always be honest — or try to — to care so deeply about another person. I didn't breathe for the two years we were together, I don't think, not once. But then when I left him, that hurt, too. It's weird the way we chase it; it's nearly driven me crazy._

_Have you ever been in love?_

_Yes, of course I have_. Quinn, from fifth and sixth years, lovely Quinn with her fast smiles and quick laughs and red kisses — _yes, I loved Quinn_, he wrote to Lily._ Not the way you loved, though_, he told her. _Quinn was easy to love most of the time. Being left in love was the painful part. There were times, after we were over, when I was mad with it — love, I mean. It must be pretty damn brilliant when it works out right, for us to keep chasing it like this._

And she responded two weeks later: _It can be pretty damn brilliant when it's wrong, too._

And that was the last he heard of Lily before he left school.

He supposed it was his turn to respond to her, and because he didn't, she didn't feel the need to write to him. For some reason, one that Scorpius didn't particularly like contemplating, he wanted Lily to want to write to him, to need to — and because she didn't seem to, then he decided he didn't need her, either. He had his friends, the ones he saw at breakfast and in his courses, and he had job applications, which were a bit unnecessary, as he'd been promised a place in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office upon completion of Hogwarts, if he wanted it, and he did. (A grand _fuck you_to his parents, although they hadn't needed to be told off in quite some time, was still in order.)

Still, he had things to occupy his time that were not letters to Lily, and he didn't realize how very much of his time the girl had taken up until Albus asked him what had happened over toast one morning.

"Did your mysterious pen-pal call it off?" is actually what he said.

Rose glanced up from her milky coffee.

Scorpius shrugged. "We both got busy with other things."

"Really? I don't see you doing much differently."

Rose cut in, "Why does it matter to you, Al?"

"It's just weird that Scorpius would be writing to someone we don't know, that's all. Don't you think so, Rose?"

"I think Scorpius is allowed to have parts of his life we don't know about. As am I. As are you, Albus." She stood up and swung her bag over her shoulder, then stormed off.

"Merlin, what's wrong with her?" Al asked, watching her leave.

Scorpius thought he knew; of all of them, Albus was having the most difficult time adjusting to the fact that they were not going to be at Hogwarts much longer, that they were not going to be tied to each other by the proximity of their beds, and therefore that they might drift apart. Rose, like Scorpius, seemed as if she was sick of the tired way Albus would say, "This is the last time we'll..." like he was mourning their friendship already.

"Things change, Al. That's not always bad." Scorpius didn't walk as quickly as Rose had, but he ran into her at the top of the stairs, where she seemed to be waiting for him.

"I know you were writing to Lily," she said, without preamble. "Why'd you stop?"

He shrugged, unsurprised. "I didn't really consciously decide to stop. The conversation just sort of fell off." He hesitated, weighing his words. "Why, did Lily say anything?"

"No, no. I was coming into the common room one night, at the beginning of the year. You didn't notice me, but I recognized Lily's owl. She hasn't mentioned anything about you." Rose narrowed her eyes. "Did you want her to?"

Honestly? Scorpius didn't know. "No," he told Rose. "Of course not."

Rose shrugged. "She's a good kid, but she's still a kid, Score. I'm not saying that to scare you off — I don't want to scare you off. I just don't want you to lose while she's still so young, either. "

A kid? She was fifteen, it was true, but the way she thought...Scorpius couldn't help but think of her as years older than him — years wiser, anyway. _Love almost made her crazy_, he wanted to tell Rose._ She thinks life is worth it, just as it is_, he wanted to say. _She says she's afraid, but really she's the bravest person I know_, he almost said. _Kid? She's felt more than I have_, he began, and changed it to, "Merlin, Rose, we were just writing to each other. She's barely a friend."

And Rose laughed. "Oh, Score, right now, maybe. I don't know. Sometimes I think you see things too narrowly. I'm afraid that someday, a long time from now, you'll wake up and realize you've been looking for her everywhere, and seeing her nowhere." Scorpius took a step back, down the stairs, but Rose reached out and caught his hand. She squeezed. "Don't look like that. I just mean, don't push her away, if that's what you're doing, while she's still your friend."

Scorpius thought about what Rose had said for the next few days, and then he pulled out a new sheet of parchment and wrote, _Sorry it took me so long to respond. You know, end of school, and everything. How have you been?_ but she didn't reply.

:::

Scorpius left Hogwarts and used his parents' money to get his own flat in London and so he didn't need to spend nights in Lily's bedroom, because his best mate was in the flat with him, and his other best mate was two blocks over, and he really had no need to think of his best mate's little sister, a sixteen year old who lived in the States.

But he still did.

November came, and Albus mentioned that she was staying in the States. "Says it's too quick a trip to come over here, but she gets the same amount of time in the spring. Mum and Dad are nervous that means that she won't come for that, either, and they won't see her at all this year, because she still claims that winter term is the most important, so she can't come home in December, and then she has that stupid research project over summer. I think they're actually considering going to the States to see her," he told Scorpius over breakfast one morning, then added, "I'm thinking of going with them."

Scorpius swallowed his surprise along with a lump of something that tasted a bit like longing and said, "That'll be nice. How long has it been since you've seen her?"

"Ages and ages. A few Christmases ago, I think." He bit his lip. "See, she's been writing really uninformative letters lately, and none of us know what's going on with her, but we're all worried. I want to see her, make sure she's all right, you know?"

"I'll take on your work for the days you're gone, if that would help," Scorpius told him.

"Would you really? That'd make it so much easier. Thanks, mate."

"No worries."

:::

Scorpius waited until the week before Christmas, and then he sat down with another sheet of parchment, tapped his quill against his lower-lip, and began:

_Dear Lily,_

_I am sorry about the way I stopped writing to you last spring. I don't really know what I was thinking, but I was waiting for something, and it was stupid, but there we are. I've never been the brightest._

_You know how you told me, ages ago, about how what we're living right now is life, there is no "real world," we'd better just make the most of the present, etc.? Well, I've been thinking about that a lot lately, because I think it's true, but I think there's also something to believing that the future will be better if — and only if — we actually work to make it better. In enjoying the present, the future might slip away, and it's important to try to like the present while working for tomorrow, I think. I know that's a lot to balance, and it might be difficult — I certainly haven't mastered it yet — but I also think it's important to keep it in mind. Like, this moment may not be perfect, and that's okay, because by living this moment the way you are, you're turning the next moment into one that's a little bit better._

_Or, that's my experience, anyway. I hope everything is going well, Lil. (And by "well" I mean I hope you feel calm and alive and like looking forward.)_

_Love,_  
><em>Scorpius<em>

Lily wrote back to him two days before Albus and his family were due to return from the States, a simple note: _thank you_.

Albus arrived home on a Saturday, just as Scorpius was making the coffee. He dropped his bag by the door and fell into a seat at the table, pressed his forehead to the pile of papers that he had left there, and said, "Please say you've made enough coffee for me."

"Of course." Scorpius poured his mate a mug and set it beside his head on the table. "How was America?"

"Fine. Very pretty. Lots of lights everywhere." Al sat up and gulped from the coffee. "Lily seemed all right, too, just a little quieter than she used to be, which is actually a bit of a blessing. Except," he stopped and stared at the coffee before taking another gulp, "one of her friends came up to me yesterday and asked to talk to me." His voice went all cold for an instant, and Scorpius reached for his own cup. _Please_, he thought, _please don't let Albus have figured it out_. "She said Lily had been in a really serious relationship her fourth year — serious, at fourteen! — and that when that ended she sort of...got silent for a long time. The girl actually said, 'she went inside herself,' but that sounds mad, doesn't it?" _It's nearly driven me crazy_, Scorpius remembered.

"Not really. It just sounds like she was dealing with the break up and didn't exactly know how to go about it."

"But then," Albus ignored him, "her friend said that she had seemed a lot better last year, a lot more awake, she said, and that now she barely worried about Lily at all."

Scorpius glanced over. "Barely?"

"That's what I said, too. And she was like, 'Well, that's why I asked to talk to you. Because sometimes I feel as if she's acting at being okay, as if she's pretending because she realized we were worried, and she's really feeling just the same as she was when they broke up.' But how could one guy do that to my sister?"

"I don't know," Scorpius said. "Maybe it's more about what she did to herself, when she was with him?"

Albus sighed and dug his thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose. "I don't know, Score. But then the girl said that she'd let me know if she thought a sibling intervention was needed — like James and I know enough about Lily to help her." Albus sounded so sad, so dead tired and sad.

Scorpius thought about how Lily had said she was afraid of her past, back in the very earliest days of their letter writing. "You might know more about her than you think you do. She's a Potter."

"Yeah, and you're a Malfoy, and you'd say that means that your parents don't know you at all."

"Parents and brothers and even cousins are different. That's something I've learned from your family. I think Lily'll be all right." Scorpius tossed Albus a piece of toast and disappeared into his bedroom, where he looked at Lily's simple_ thank you_ sitting beneath an empty pint glass on his desk.

:::

_I don't want you to save me_, the next note read, _but could you tell me a happy story. I've lived all the good ones here, and they don't seem as nice in the retelling._

Scorpius read the note over his morning coffee in his office, and he shut the door and sat with a blank parchment to respond immediately, because the_ I don't want you to save me_ terrified him. He didn't want to save her, either. He didn't want her to need saving. She had been more alive than him, when she was younger. She had seemed beyond emotions, beyond sorrow.

He wrote her about a night out with Rose and Albus, which had ended with Rose and Albus going home with strangers who turned into much more, and Scorpius somehow locked in the bathroom, sleeping with his head against the sticky counter of the sink and waking with toilet paper stuck to his shoe. He sent it to her before lunch that day.

:::

_Fair trade_, she wrote. _This was back when I was fifteen, and trying to get over Robert in the normal way, and so my friends and I were out in town, at a Muggle bar (it's ridiculously easy to get fake IDs over here, stop looking like Albus does when I tell him I've had alcohol) and I was trying to get this one guy to notice me, but he was clearly only interested in my friend Angela. She was totally going to ignore him for me, but I told her to go for it, that I was fine, and so she did, and I walked back to school with my other friends, and we stopped off at the beach, and because we were all a little tipsy we decided to go swimming but when we got in the water we remembered that it was October, right, so pretty cold, so I cast this fire charm that warmed the water right up but unfortunately also attracted the attention of the Muggle police and I barely got it out before they got there and they took us down to the station and we were sitting there, shivering because we were still wet, and my friend Chrissy tells this police officer he's sentencing us to death because we're about to freeze, so they get out some old uniforms and give them to us while they call our headmistress, and when she comes in — absolutely livid, as one would expect — she sees us sitting in a neat row, dressed in oversized cop uniforms, and she just starts laughing until she started crying, and I think the cops were happier to see her go than us, in the end._

_Also Angie ended up dating that guy and they're still together so all in all it was a nice night, as far as nights go._

_Thanks for the story,_  
><em>Lil<em>

:::

_Do you know it's been nearly three years since I last slept in your bed? Doesn't that mean you're meant to be coming home soon?_

Scorpius agonized over sending the note. Lily and he had written to each other on and off, but it seemed somehow presumptuous to intimate that he was hoping for her physical presence. Because, after all, they were based entirely in short notes sent at desparate or lonely moments.

But he sent it, even though he could have asked Albus or Rose or even Harry whether Lily was coming back to the UK after she finished school. He could have even asked James. But it seemed more honest to ask Lily, herself.

Of course, Lily caught every nuance of the note.

_Are you flirting with me, Scorpius Malfoy?_  
><em>I'll be back in the UK at the end of June. Can't seem to find a job here, but that's mostly because I'm not really sure what I want to do. Fortune tellers aren't exactly highly employable, even ones named Potter.<em>

_My bed is off limits, but I'd love to see you._  
><em>Lil<em>

Scorpius smiled and folded the letter into the drawer where he kept the others. He often wondered what Albus would do if he ever stumbled upon them, then realized that he didn't mind. Nothing in these letters needed to be kept from Al; it seemed strange to him, now, that he hadn't just said, "I'm writing to Lily," when Albus had bothered him about the letters back at Hogwarts. But then, if he got the wrong idea — and would it have been the wrong idea? Because Scorpius had felt a swooping in his gut when he read, My bed is off limits.

He didn't really want it to be.

_Mine isn't_, he wrote but didn't send.

:::

Scorpius came home late after work on a Friday at the beginning of July and found an unfamiliar figure sitting on the kitchen table, swinging her legs and chattering at Albus, who stood at the sink with his hands full of dishes.

Of course it was Lily. Red hair, freckled skin, purple fingernails, a voice rising and falling with the story she was telling Albus, sounding like tides. She looked younger than Scorpius had expected her to look; less ready to take on the world. Albus glanced up and grinned at the sight of him in the doorway. Scorpius crossed to the kitchen and Lily spun, her smile bright — her eyes were old.

"Scorpius?" she asked, as if there was any question.

"Lily." He grinned and held out a hand. "How good to finally meet you."

She ignored the hand, hopped from the table and hugged him, her red hair tucking beneath his chin and her hands pressing against his shoulder-blades. He stared over her head at the astonished Albus for a moment and then hugged her back, keeping his own hands as light on her t-shirt as possible.

She pulled away. "My bedmate!" she told Albus, as if that explained everything. "So glad to see you!"

"You, too." He couldn't look at Albus, was afraid of the expression on his face. "How was the trip? Are you in London for the day?"

"The trip was fine." Lily took her place on the table again, and Scorpius picked up a dishtowel to give his hands something to do, now that Lily was out of them. "And I'm actually in London for a week. Job-searching. I think I can probably apply my skills to something in the Ministry, but I'm sort of considering getting a job at a coffee shop in Diagon Alley or maybe a Muggle one for a little while. Just to get used to being back."

"That's smart," Albus said, as Scorpius nodded.

"Are you staying here?"

Lily laughed. "No, with Rose. If I were staying here I'd totally kick you out of your bed, though, Score. Fair turnaround."

Albus set down the plate he was washing. "Have you two ever met before?" he asked.

"You know," Scorpius began, but Lily cut in.

"Of course not. There's just a connection you get when you share sleeping space with somebody."

"I've stayed in plenty of hotels, but I've never felt connected to any of the other people who've slept in the same bed as me," Albus said. His voice sounded stiff. Scorpius glanced at him.

"Wouldn't you, though, if you knew their names?" Scorpius asked, then changed the subject. "So, where is Rose?"

"She went out to get some wine, because apparently you guys are lacking in the good alcohol." Lily shrugged. "I'd have tried some of your whisky, but Rose said she wanted something a little bit less harsh."

"To be fair, the whisky is of a very shitty quality," Albus admitted.

Rose arrived soon after, carrying a bag full of much more than wine, and Scorpius felt as if she was watching him the whole evening, as more and more Weasleys appeared at the door to their flat. He gave up trying to understand their overlapping stories and retreated to his bedroom, sitting on his floor and leaning against his bed. He would have stayed out there, but Rose's gaze made him overtly aware of how much time he was spending examining Lily, and he was terribly conscious of the fact that Rose was noticing every time his eyes flicked in her cousin's direction.

He heard a rustling by the door and glanced to see a piece of paper slipped beneath the opening. He crossed, picked it up, read, _Can I come in?_ and opened the door.

"Or you could have knocked," he said, as Lily stepped inside and he shut the door behind her.

"Where's the fun in that?" she asked, glancing around his room. "You don't like to leave a mess, do you."

"Sorry I'm clean?"

"Clean is normalish. This looks like an obsession." She tapped the row of quills on the edge of his desk, organized by height and feather type. She glanced over at him and grinned. "If I switched eagle for crow would you kill me?"

He tilted his head, like he was considering it. "Not for eagle and crow. Eagle and pigeon, maybe."

Her fingers inched toward the row, and he moved beside her, took his hands in his. "So, how are you?"

She looked up at him. From this close, without any overprotective Potters or Weasleys around, he could see that her eyes had a ring of gold around the pupils, and that she had bitten her lip so much that it was raw in one spot.

"Scared," she said, and he led her to the bed, and sat her down, and then straddled his desk chair so he was facing her over the back. She smiled at the way he put distance between them, and then lay back on his bed, her feet on his pillow, and stared at the ceiling. "Remember when I told you why I went to the States?"

"Yeah, of course."

"Turns out my history is inescapable. I was just postponing...everything."

"No, you weren't." Scorpius wanted to be beside her, so he gripped the back of his chair tight enough to turn his knuckles white. "Maybe you went to the States to escape your family — something that is obviously impossible. But that's why you went. Why did you stay?"

She turned her head to look at him sideways. Her hair was a mess on the quilt folded at the bottom of his bed. Her eyes were bright. "Oh," she said. That was it.

He nodded, like he understood everything encompassed in that single word.

And then she asked, "Remember when we stopped writing to each other for a little while? Did you miss me?"

It was a needy question, and he hoped she realized it was, but he answered honestly, "I didn't know what to do with myself."

"Me, neither." She turned to look at the ceiling again. "I thought of so many letters to write you — I used to compose them in my head when I couldn't sleep — but I never got any of them down on paper. I guess you know I wasn't really at my best back then."

"I could have helped," he said.

"I never wanted you to save me." She'd written that to him once.

"I never thought you needed saving."

She turned her gaze on him again, and just as she opened her mouth someone knocked at Scorpius's door.

"Who is it?"

"Me." Rose opened the door and slipped inside. "I thought you'd be here," she told Lily. "They're wondering where you are. I'd get back out there before they come looking."

"Would it be so bad if they found me here?" Lily asked, sitting up and placing her bare feet on the floor.

"Maybe not, but I'm not really interested in finding out."

She shrugged, and moved past her cousin in an aggressive step. She turned to look at Scorpius at the door. "Can we get breakfast tomorrow? At the cafe down the block from Rose?"

"Sure," he said, "I'd like that," even though Rose was glaring at him.

Lily smiled. "See you at nine, then."

"See you."

"What're you doing?" Rose asked, as soon as Lily shut the door. Scorpius was nearly positive that Lily still stood outside, listening. He thought Rose probably knew this, too.

"You know we've been writing to each other, Rose. We're friends."

"The way you look at her isn't friendly. Not at all."

"Would it be so wrong?" he asked. "Really, would it? If I told you I might want to date Lily, might want to see whether we could work like that? Would it be very very bad if I told you — and Albus, and James, and Harry, even — that I thought that Lily and I could probably work very well like that? That we might fit? Wasn't it you who said I shouldn't lose her, back at Hogwarts, because I might wake up missing her?"

Rose was smiling. "I just wanted to make sure," she said, "you know what you are doing."

:::

"Love drives me mad," Lily told Scorpius, over coffee and scones at the cafe the next morning.

He stirred sugar into his coffee and looked at her. "Do you remember when you told me that even when love went wrong, it was still brilliant?"

"Did I say that?" she asked. "Really?"

Scorpius nodded. "I thought it was very smart, and I thought it was dumb of me to try to talk about love going right, because I'd never experienced that."

"Do you think it's possible for love to go right?" Scorpius raised his eyebrows, thinking of his parents, her parents, her aunts and uncles, and she nodded, catching the thought at the same time. "For us, I mean," she corrected. "Do you think it's possible that even though I go mad with it, I could go mad in a right sort of way?"

"I think," Scorpius bit his lip, then rushed, "from what I've seen of it, I love your madness."

Lily smiled, "I think you'll regret that statement, Score, I really do." But she leaned over the small table and her lips were soft, except in that spot where she bit them, and he thought she was wrong, but even if he regretted saying that, he'd never regret the way she sighed when he pulled away to tuck her hair behind her ear, or the way her hand felt when it landed on his, or the way he felt with her actually there.

**A/N**: I hope this isn't too horrible. I've never read Lily/Scorpius and I'm a bit out of practice on the fanfiction thing (and on the fiction thing, to be honest). I do appreciate reviews. Thank you so much for reading! (One last Lily/James, and then this collection will be complete.)


	14. lily and james again

**Disclaimer**: I do not own _Harry Potter_.

Pairing: Lily Evans + James Potter  
><span>For<span>: Ela (_snickets_)  
><span>Prompts<span>: no clichés, "harmony"

:::

unbearable

Lily woke up happy. An emotion that was impossible to define, even more difficult to pin down, but here in the dark at four in the morning, lying on a mattress that took up much of the wood floor, feeling James's right hand on her hip — tight, even in his sleep — happiness felt easy.

He was breathing on her neck, each exhale sending a few strands of red hair up into the air, each inhale drawing them nearer to his mouth. She wondered whether he ever woke up, disgusted, because a tendril of hair had hit his lip, slipped between his teeth, settled on his tongue. Whether he hated when the citrusy taste of her shampoo interrupted his dreams.

James always exhaled when Lily inhaled, creating a harmony of breathing that she loved and he probably didn't notice. Every breath she took carried traces of James. It shouldn't have been possible, she thought, to be able to want another person so much. To find even breathing romantic — a year ago she'd have kicked herself in the ass for such a stupid thought.

But here she was, one month out of school, sleeping on a mattress in a house she and James owned — actually _owned_ — trying to work out how to get even closer to James, even though they were twisted together utterly indecently, and she didn't want to kick herself in the ass at all, because she was very, very happy.

James's fingers began moving in a light rhythm over her skin, a tap of his index finger, then his ring finger, then his middle finger, and then his other hand snaked from beneath her and pushed her hair up on the pillow, and he pressed a kiss to the bare skin of her neck.

"Doesn't it feel weird?" he asked, when he pulled away.

"What feels weird?" Lily still faced the square of gray light falling through the window on the wall above them.

"The fact that we're so grown up."

Lily rolled over, out from beneath his hand. She could make out the mess of his hair and the slight shine of his eyes and the angle of his nose, but everything was shadowy and dark and perfect in a quiet way. "I still think we're playing at it. My mum and dad are going to come through the door tomorrow and ask how we like our new playhouse; we'll cook with plastic food and our tea'll be water and everything will be smaller than it should be."

James let out a breath of a laugh. He smelled raw and sour, like the wine from the housewarming dinner with the boys the night before, and Lily buried her nose in the skin at his collarbone.

"Wouldn't it be sad if we couldn't even be trusted with real tea?" he asked, digging his chin into the top of her head, a little harder than normal, like he wanted to get beneath her skin and bone and into her brain, to settle there.

"And normal sized dishes." Lily imagined the two of them, sitting at a tiny table and using small forks and small knives to slice through fake miniature carrots set on sickle-sized plates. She laughed into James's shoulder, and then sobered. "I don't know, I think it might be weirder for us not to be ready, in a way."

"Ready to be on our own, you mean?" One of James's hands was caught in her hair between her shoulder-blades, weaving strands between his fingers, and the other was on her lower-back, fingertips pressing five indents into her skin.

"Yeah. Can you imagine going back to school next year?"

"Merlin, no. Us back in McGonagall's class? We'd kill her, probably. I couldn't stand another hour sitting there."

"Exactly." Although it was more likely that McGonagall would have killed them. She'd gotten close to it a few times, towards the end of the last year. "And with everything else going on," Lily shut her eyes, even though she couldn't see anything with them open against James's skin, "it would just seem such a colossal waste to spend our time taking exams and writing essays."

"Let's not, Lily."

"Sorry," she murmured. She knew what he meant. Moments like this weren't meant for sadness and fear; this was stolen time, time outside of everything else.

"It's all right, just," he tightened his hold on her, "I love how sometimes you and I don't need to think, when it's just us. We don't need anything, because what we are is — enough, I guess, is the word, even though it doesn't seem like much."

Lily sighed. "Enough seems like a lot to me. Exactly right, you know? Like when you're eating chocolate and you only have one piece and that's too little and then you have five more and feel sick, and we're that perfect amount in the middle — the one you never really hit, because you always think you want more. But for us, we always hit it."

"Merlin, Lil, you would boil us down to sweets."

"I'm just saying," she protested, "I only mean that I could never have too much of you. So in all honesty you're not like chocolate at all. Except that you're good."

He didn't say anything for a few minutes. Lily thought he might have fallen asleep, and then he pulled away from her, rolled from the mattress and stood, crossing to the window and standing in front of it, a silhouette against the lightening sky outside.

"James?" Lily sat up, too, drew her knees to her chest and rested her chin against them, watching the way he stood so still, so serious.

"I'm sorry." He leaned his forehead against the glass, she could see in the angle of his body how everything felt suddenly heavy. Her lungs felt thicker, the air like something else entirely, her heartbeat sluggish. "I know I was the one who — I know I said we shouldn't think."

"But?" she prompted.

"But." He turned. "I just feel like we don't have enough time, like if we never slept, if we were awake and together and breathing the same air and if we never let even a centimeter of space get between us, I still don't think there'd be enough time. Like when we promise, 'until death,' or whatever, when we do that — even if we live until we're one thousand — I still worry about the end. I'm still terrified of being without you. Because I said we're enough, and we are, we are, but without us then there's...really, Lil, I think of the possibility of being without you, and all I can think of is emptiness."

Lily got off of their mattress and met James at the window. She stopped in front of him, her toes three large inches away from his. He stood still and thin and blocking barely any of the light that spilled, suddenly bright, through the spotted pane. He didn't move, but his breaths were coming fast, matching hers, now, taking air at the same time that she did.

Lily held out her arms, James's old t-shirt scraping higher up on her hips as she reached for him. He still didn't move, and she said, "The idea of being alive and not being able to see you makes me want to die," and he bit his lip. "I know that's not what you want to hear. I don't mean that I will die. I will want to, but I won't. If one of us dies before the other, then the other will keep going on, because we are brave and in love, and that means," James's gaze had dropped to their feet, and Lily snagged his chin on the fingertips of her right hand, tilted his face to look at her, "that means that we will keep loving each other. Death doesn't take any of this," she dug her thumbnail into the beginnings of stubble growing on his chin, a red mark she would kiss later, "this moment, right now, yesterday, and the day before, and the first day I saw you, really saw you, it can't take any of that away. Okay, James? I love you, and I will keep loving you, and of course there won't be enough time, of course there won't, there never is, but_ there is time,_ and that is what matters."

"But it will still end, Lil."

Lily stepped forward until she stood on James's feet. They were nearly the same height and she wrapped her arms around his neck, leaned until she could press her ear against his chest. She could feel his heartbeat, could hear it, slower than hers but made of the same cells, rhythms, the same mysterious propulsion keeping it moving. "Everything does. Would you like to spend your life mourning an ending that hasn't happened yet?"

"Endings," he corrected, "mourning endings."

"Okay." Lily stepped back and took James's hand. "Come with me."

He didn't ask where they were going, even when they crossed through their bedroom and the hall, across the box-filled living room and out the back door with its creaky hinge, down the small square lawn and to the lone tree whose branches hung over the rock wall that marked the edge of their tiny property.

Lily hopped up on the wall, her bare toes digging uselessly at the hard surface as she pulled James up beside her. The sun was almost risen, and they stood, nearly-naked, staring out over the field between their house and the next, and Lily said, "I am sad that someday you and I will be dead. But I am happy that there is this field out here, this tree," she placed a hand against the bark of the branch above them, "that there is a place where you and I can be alive, can be ourselves." She turned to face him. James's eyes were sad, hesitant as they met her gaze; he had violet shadows above his cheekbones and his hair was a mess. Lily needed him, and she wanted him whole, happy. "I am not saying that the happiness of being here discounts the sadness of the future. Both are very real; I get that. I am just saying that if I could have anything, my love, anything at all, I would not have eternity. I would have you. I would have _now_."

James reached out and tangled his fingers in her hair as he drew her toward him. He pressed his lips against hers, and their morning breaths mingled, sour tastes and vague remnants of mint toothpaste mixing in with the sweetness of a terribly sad kiss.

Lily knew that she and James would say goodbye to each other a thousand times. It felt right that their first real goodbye came with the sunrise of their first morning in their new house. She only hoped that their last kiss, their last goodbye, would carry half the meaning that this one did.**  
><strong>

**A/N**: I haven't read enough Lily/James to be sure of what constitutes a cliché, but all of the fics I've read have been set at Hogwarts, so I thought I'd just take them out of there. I'm sorry if this is still terribly cliché, as I'm fairly sure it is. I hope it's not horrible, anyway.

And that's a wrap on this collection. Thank you so very much for reading, and to all of those who were lovely and left reviews, thank you doubly. xx


End file.
